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Flush Edison-base wall receptacles such as this one were probably never all that common. Most residences would not have had wall receptacles at all before the late'20s--if you needed to plug something in, you used a "cap and base". It would have been a fancy house indeed that had wall receptacles before T-slots became common.

I'm not sure what year these were banned definitively, but they were increasingly discouraged throughout the '30s and seem to have disappeared entirely by the '40s. My '36 GE Supply catalog does not list them. T-slots seem to have been the standard in the '30s, as there were probably at one time almost as many tandem plugs as parallel.

The fourth edition of the American Electrician's handbook (1936) shows an illustration of a parallel-blade (now NEMA 1-15) plug cap and base:

I actually remember old cartoons (could have been Tom and Jerry) that depicted wall-mounted edison sockets. They were a convenient comedic device, because it was easy to insert Tom's tail into the outlet and make him light up like a bulb.

It's amazing how basic safety wasn't even considered in electrical designs back then. I mean, using a light bulb socket as a regular outlet? Some kid could stick his finger in it easily and.. ouch! At least that explains why they didn't last very long; after a few people got hurt folks realized a new outlet design was necessary; light bulb sockets would no longer do!

-Z

I thought that some of these edison screw outlets would have been for use as fuseholders. Say you had a 20 amp branch circuit, and you could create a 15 amp sub-circuit by connecting the 20amp circuit to the center prong, and the 15 amp starts at the shell. Probably was never code to do that, though....

Another time I ran across some edison base fuses, and thought it was a strange kind of lightbulb. We had breakers in the house. I was 7. No, I didn't try them out in a lamp.... Think my father told me that they wern't light bulbs.

wa2ise:
The old church I referred to above had several rooms in which there was an edison socket (with a single receptacle plate, rather than the hinged brass one) about seven feet off the floor, near the door to the room. Unscrew the 30 amp fuse , the room light goes out. Seemed really odd, since there were also a pair of large fuse boxes (those really old ones with the exposed busses and knife switches) in the boiler room at the rear of the building.

Yes, about 99% of the fuses in these panels were 30 amp, and if I remember correctly, the conductors were only no. 14 or 12 awg.

No fires...yet.

Mike (mamills)

Yaktx said:


What exactly is "composition"? Is it some kind of hard rubber or....?

And boy would I love to get my hands on the guy who invented these "handle-less" plug-caps.


http://www.hudsonscustommachining.com/plug.ge.1.jpg
http://www.hudsonscustommachining.com/plug.rodale.1.jpg

Only way to get those suckers out of a light-socket without getting bitten is to yank on the cord. And I'm sure that's not too healthy for the wires.

Was it too much trouble to mold a short tube-like extension into the plug body? I've seen most other plug manufacturers do that.

*end rant*

If you put the "underwriters' knot inside those plugs, yanking on the cord might work. But most outlets didn't grab that well anyway.

Excellent question!

"Composition", in the days before modern plastics, was any amalgam of various insulating materials, usually rubber, plant fibers such as wheat straw or cork, minerals such as mica or asbestos, all ground up and mixed together. There were undoubtedly hundreds of varieties of substances all going under this name, and they were not used solely for electrical materials. Dice, chess pieces, inexpensive tableware, toys, tourist souvenirs, you name it.

If it looks and feels sort of like hard rubber, but you can see fibers, it's probably "composition".

Ah, guys you don't get it, they are PLUGS, not UNPLUGS. Why would you ever want to unplug something?

Wow....so these are what edison sockets are eh? So this is what I hear about when folks claimed they could insert a light bulb and it would light up....

I guess in those days all appliances had the light bulb screw style plug and then eventually the "screw in adapter" to convert the socket to a quick disconnect style receptacle came about....and then one day duplex receptacles were invented....?