C-H thanks for posting the pics! I wanted to post something like this myself but couldn't get to it, glad you did this for me!
Yes these are common ways to get power when a fuse blows and no replacement is available. I've seen people pulling one strand out of an old cord and wrapping it around the fuse body.
Diazed II fuses are still pretty common here for residential/small commercial panels and are newly installed for appartment mains, DIII are used about everywhere for single family mains.
Thanks Pauluk for posting the link to the diagrams, yes, TN-C-S and TT are the systems used here.
In the 1920ies and 30ies (maybe earlier) we had fused receptacles here. The fuses were small cardboard strips (about 3/16" to 1") with brass sleeves on each end, the fuse wire visible through a round hole on one side. TWo of them (hot/neutral)were inserted into the receptacle. They were typically 1A (orange) or 2A (brown), though the color coding wasn't the least reliable. I've also seen 6 and 10A ones (the latter pretty useless as no receptacle was rated higher than 6A)
The only common wiring systems apart from the surface mounted knob and tube (2 rubber and cloth covered conductors wound together to a cord and mounted on glass or porcelaine insulators) were single wires, either directly plastered in (a nightmare) put in plaster and lath ceilings (even more of a nightmare, imagine one of these burning off, had this in our house some years ago!) or used in conduit mostly made of cardboard impregnated with some asphalt stuff, the better, though rare version with a very thin steel covering. These wires had a base rubber coating, then they were covered with cloth and finally impregnated with smelly asphalt. 1. sq. mm solid tinned copper conductor. Today some of these are still in decent condition, but most on of them the rubber crumbles away, especially were they are exposed, e.g. where they come out of the ceiling. As about 3/4 of Vienna's houses are pre-WWI this stuff is used and abused about everywhere. I once got bit when wetting a wall to remove wallpaper because of those wires. I didn't even know there were wires in that wall, they were abandoned, yet still hot!
In the 50ies PVC covered wires came up.
The wire type I like best is something like double-sheathed zip cord with more space between the conductors, directly buried in plaster. It's very easy to handle (way easier than modern stubborn round Romex, which is listed for the same use). It's still available, but for 73 cents/metre (roughly 3ft) compared to 8 Euro ($8) for a 50m (165 ft) coil of Romex, i. e. 16 cents /m
