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KozmoNaut posted:As does most of my apartment. Cloth-insulated wires running through metal tubes. I had to change a light switch last year, and the insulation would literally crumble at the slightest touch. After that, I vowed never to touch it again until I've had a professional replace every last wire. That's the old vulcanized rubber crumbling away. Most rubber insulation ends up like this (crumbly charcoal-like bits), others rot to tar-like goo. There are people out there who don't replace their fuses when they blow for whatever reason, they just put in a strand of copper wire instead and clamp it down like that. The scary part is that this is done not only in standalone houses, I've seen it many times in large apartment complexes with hundreds of tenants. Heavens forbid that you actually NEED the fuse to blow, for example if your old rubber or cotton insulation is not doing its job anymore. Some people just don't understand the concept of a fire hazard, which, in case of an actual goddamn fire translates to dozens of fatalities in a large apartment complex. A SWEATY FATBEARD has a new favorite as of 14:07 on Oct 7, 2012 |
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Oct 7, 2012 14:02
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GAY 4 ORGANS 
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Landerig posted:Only 4 circuits? Do you live in a cracker jack box? I love this fusebox. Old cotton insulated cables, newer white cable that seems to touch the (exposed) terminal like a cat's whisker, dangerously exposed bits everywhere. I know the wire is clamped down but holy poo poo man have that wiring replaced as soon as possible. I'd be afraid to sneeze in the general vicinity of this thing.
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Oct 8, 2012 11:43
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wipeout posted:What have the Romans ever done for us? Many local roads in Europe, especially Southern Europe, are actual roman roads that have been simply paved over with asphalt. edit for content: I live in a pretty old apartment building which has a special laundry room in the basement, and tenants used to have their alotted laundry time on a schedule. There is a small washing/boiling room and a big room for laundry drying (how well this worked in the basement, I don't know). Anyways, there is a big concrete sink where housewives used to scrub the laundry down, and then put it into a big copper cauldron which was cleverly integrated into the body of a coal furnace. This was made out of brick. You'd light the fire underneath the cauldron, your laundry would boil in soap water and you'd stir the whole thing with an enormous wooden spoon. It's hard to appreciate just how difficult doing the laundry was before the era of automatic washing machines. A SWEATY FATBEARD has a new favorite as of 16:28 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 16:12
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While we're on the subject, my grandad used to have one of those "manual" washing machines. I never could have figured out how the thing worked when I was a kid; I was used to more modern machines with a spinning drum. Here is the cover of the manual (it's very high quality glossy paper and nice color print, to boot).  It boils! It washes! It wringes! People were easily impressed in 1950s, I think.  Here's how you work with it. The motor has a simple on/off switch, and there is also a timer which can be set to a maximum of four minutes spinning time. There is no central spool that stirs the laundry around, there is a ribbed disc at the bottom which creates a vortex in the laundry cauldron, while a 2000 watt electric heater heats the whole thing from below.  There was also a foldable wringer that resided on the inside of the cauldron when the machine was not used. The machine shipped with two-foot-long wooden tongs that were used to remove the laundry from the hot cauldron and place it into the wringer. When you were done with the laundry, you lowered a rubber drainage hose below the bottom level of the cauldron, and you'd empty the soap water into an ordinary bucket. While the machine was hardly a work of art, it was a step up from having to manually boil and stir your laundry on the stove and then having to use a whole set of large and cumbersome devices to do the job. The washing machine is no longer with us, but I kept the manual because I thought its 1950's artwork was pretty cool.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:36
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Groke posted:We were still on a manual exchange when I was a kid. Manual exchange remained in use in Croatia well into the late 90's. People in the countryside had ridiculous phone numbers like "241" or "7". If you wanted to phone up someone who was wired to the old manual hub, you first had to announce the call by phoning a local telephone lady. You'd tell her which number you wanted to call and then she'd plug in your cord into her switchboard and the country phone would ring.
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Oct 19, 2012 15:44
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Nixie tubes. They had their heyday from mid 1960s until early 70's when they were displaced by much more practical fluorescent displays. Here is the clock I built using tiny 1969 Hitachi tubes scavenged from a broken calculator.
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Oct 30, 2012 19:06
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Jibo posted:They still have their place in modern society as being an over-priced clock commodity. I agree, and also, unreasonably expensive and clocks found on ebay are tacky as gently caress. I got my tubes for free though. 
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Oct 30, 2012 19:13
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Ron Burgundy posted:Ugh gently caress nitrate. Indeed gently caress nitrate. I've had quite a few magnetic (reel-to-reel) audio tapes and they would snap in you gave them a mean look. Fix it up with sticky tape? No I don't think so. The tape would catch on the capstan and the result was that the tape unraveled from BOTH spools, and if you tried to stop the reeels manually, the tape would snap. gently caress nitrate.
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Nov 25, 2012 18:16
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