Here's a little thing I bought off of a local auction site here.
It still has quite a charge in it too.
It's been a while since I've seen one of these:



I'd only be guessing how old it is.
Anyone have any ideas?.

hi trumpy, i belive these proably go back to the 30's or 40's. rember my dad talking about these.his uncle use to have a radio that used these until he got a wind generator. also around this time the TUNGAR & RECTIGON battery chargers were showing up, this way the rechargble batteries were showing up for use here in my neck of the woods.

I thought Tungar bulbs (mercury vapor rectifiers) were used to charge the A battery (typically a 6-volt wetcell used for tube filaments). This is a B battery, used for the plate supply.

Battery valve/tube portable sets were produced here pretty much until transistors took over in the late 50s/early 60s. Replacement "B" or "HT" batteries were still sold for some years afterward.

Thanks guys!,
I just wondered about the history of the thing.
Battery valve sets were quite big here and in Australia and to a degree it was because of the lack of mains electricity in parts of both countries, being held back by both WW1 and WW2.
I've had the inkling to open this thing up, but the "good" side of me says, just leave it as it is.
I'm going to store it in a heavy plastic bag to make sure that it doesn't deteriorate any further.
With vents of course.

Batteries like this one were widely used to power portable electronics in the "hollow state" era. Batteries were commonly available up to 510V output, used for things like photoflashes and geiger counters. You could actually give yourself a heck of a jolt if you weren't careful changing the battery!

Internal construction is most often stacks and stacks of small 1.5V carbon zinc button cells.

Very interesting . Does the hole (I guess that's what it is...) in the top have anything to do with its electrical connections?

Mike (mamills)

If I remember correctly, we plugged the wireless directly into the battery with little red/black bakelite plugs; the bayonet was about 1/8" diameter, split. As NJ says, nothing exciting inside, just piles of rectangular cells; each a sandwich of carbon plate/sal ammoniac gel, the gas absorber in a paper sac, ( manganese-dioxide), and a zinc plate, with thin connecting strips up to the socket block. I seem to remember the top being potted in gas-pitch. The sub-assembled cell was usually held together by a crimped card edge strip, but the last versions I saw had polythene/pvc? crimps.
The wireless valve heaters ran off a separate 2v glass lead-acid accumulator, and before we got mains power in '52, I used to lug 2 of these 'occard lumps to the pub for charging each week. Cost, threepence (= 5 cents US) per acc, plus I got my pocket money when I returned, ( one and six = 30 cents US).
Sixpence for my National Savings Stamp, ( paying off the lease-lend ), a bottle of R. White's lemonade (tuppence-halfpenny), a Mars bar, a toffee-apple, some licorice, or how about a quarter of pear drops?, some jelly babies?, a packet of sherbet-dip perhaps? or a few pennies into my firework club card for November 5th. Ah! the pleasure, the anticipation, peeping over that sweet-counter to make ones choice, ration-ticket gripped like a vice.
And I must have squandered the rest!

Alan

Mike, if I'm not mistaken that's a little two-pin polarized socket for inserting a plug from the radio.

Said plug consisted usually of a phenolic disk with one large round pin and a thinner round pin (so you couldn't insert it backwards).

Kind of the same theory as the metal snaps on a contemporary 9 volt battery for a pocket radio.

It looks like it could be a dual voltage B battery, with 0, 45, and 90V terminals.

Yes Sven,
You're dead right!.
The Negative pole of the socket is the larger of the two, to prevent reverse polarity.
The socket actually has 2 positions, one for 45VDC and the other for 22.5VDC.
Not sure why you would need that voltage, unless of course you were going to use two batteries in Series.

Some radios used a lower voltage for the detector and a higher voltage for the audio amp plate.

Dual-output batteries with a tap part way were pretty common at one time. Although it's easy to think of tube/valve sets as needing relatively high HT/B+ voltages, many of the low-signal tubes for battery receivers were designed to run on quite low voltages.

Some of the older sets used a separate grid bias, or "C-" supply, negative with respect to chassis. This could be either a separate battery, or incorporated as part of the main HT/B battery (although the grid bias section had negligible load on it).


I have one of those old, huge "Everything Within" household books from the 1930s which has a whole chapter on "wireless."

Those fortunate enough to have D.C. mains, it explains, can charge their accumulators by unscrewing the cap from a light switch and connecting the accumulator across the terminals so that the light acts to limit the charging current.

And how do you determine the polarity of the switch terminals? Why, you take two pieces of wire, drop them into a beaker filled with a vinegar solution, and observe from which conductor the bubbles rise.

Can you imagine the legal types at the publisher allowing them give advice like that these days?




[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 11-01-2005).]

Ouch! I've had my fair share of scary DIY advice from old books, but that one easily tops it all!

I have an old electrical book where the writer frowns on the use of lamps in series to obtain a charging voltage off dc mains- but his concern was only the damage done to cells by poor voltage control, not the safety angle! He also castigated the use by some ingenious tightwads who had discovered that there was a small voltage differential between neutral and earth and had used this free current to charge batteries or even operate the servants' bells to summon the serfs! He recommended taking accumulators to an 'expert' at a Wireless Shop, where proper facilities existed and the life of the units was thus assured. Our pub-landlord used the bulb method, ( by then ac- how it was rectified I have no idea.
In the days when children had to be parked, by law, outside of drinking dens, (while ma and pa had a small beer), fobbed off with a bag of broken-crisps and a bottle of pop, I remember we kids used to occasionally sneak round to the charging shed at the back. A faint dull red glow of several small lamps could be seen on the bench, the rest of the shed was in velvet darkness. "Child-rumour" was that 'they' kept a mad-grandmother/rabid cats/a monster chained to the wall in there, so we used to have a quick peep and run off terrified back to the well-lit frontage.

I saw similar advice in a book of similar vintage, but this one involved a 5 amp plug and socket in series with the 5 amp lighting circuit main, and a car battery. Apparently 'the reduction in voltage to your lamps will be insignificant and will actually reduce your lighting bill'.

Mention was also made of the vinegar water polarity test, with salt water not recommended as a test as both electrodes will bubble.

A stern warning was made not to attempt this if you had AC mains.

A 'shorting plug' should be provided to allow normal usage of the lighting with no battery connected, and connections to the battery should be made before connecting the plug.

No mention was made of the effects of interupting ~5amps DC around the hydrogen/oxygen buildup that would have been present in the 'cupboard under the stairs' at the time. It was probably assumed that anyone attempting this would have knowledge of this danger.

A more innocent time, for sure. (No mention of part P was made either Paul )

I think the key point is that in those earlier times people did and were expected to take more responsibility for their own actions, a sentiment with which I agree fully.

These days, somebody cuts toward himself with a Stanley knife, nearly removes half his insides when he slips, spends a week in hospital, and then tries to sue the tool manufacturer for not warning him that a sharp blade could cause injury.

By the way, you should see some of the advice in the medical section of that book.

There's an interesting little section about a substance which is apparently full of medicinal qualities and can be cultivated easily in any warm spot, such as the corner of a greenhouse, so that a ready supply will be available should it be needed.

The name of this wonder medicine? Cannibis!

Back in the 1970ies Vienna tramways didn't have automatic doors, the doors were just left open. During the last few years of these cars (the last one pulled in in 1978) they wrapped some trees next to the tracks in red and white plastic because people had been sept off the cars because they didn't notice the trees... nowadays not even that would be enough... but these cars are still legal for special services.

In 1978 I was visiting France with my Mom and Dad, we stayed with their friends in Esply (sp?)

Anyway we would take a high speed train to Paris and we could open the doors anytime we wanted. No one seemed surprised that 14 year olds where playing at an open door.

Vous voudrez mourir? J'm'en fous! Vive le sport!

Alan


* You wish to die? I don't give a ****! etc....


[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 11-06-2005).]
I'll get it right in a minute!

[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 11-06-2005).]

Funny you mention trains... the Austrian Federal Railways still have several hundred cars without automatic doors in service and don't seem to want to get rid of them in near future. Usually the conductor patrols the train after every stop and checks the doors, but they're never locked, only closed. Those cars are great anyway... the windows slide almost all the way down, letting in cool air, the seats are thick dark red plush... pure 1950ies! And lovely to ride too, most modern railway cars are uncomfortable comparedd to those old cars.

Virtually all the trains here just had manual doors when I used to ride British Railways as a kid. I haven't been on a train for many years (except subways), but I think almost all of the new stock now in use has automatic doors, or at least semi-automatic (press a button to open the door, but it won't work until the driver/conductor turns on a master key).


Just how it used to be here. And back in the 1970s somebody arriving late and seeing the train just starting to pull away could even make a dash for it, open a door and climb inside as it was gathering speed, often assisted by the station porter who would run alongside and make sure the door was shut behind him. That's impossible now, of course.


We had similar windows here on the doors, so on a hot day you could open the window right down and get a cool breeze. Now I think about it some more, I seem to recall that in the very last years of service of the old cars they disconnected the internal door handles on some of the faster trains so that you had to open the window and reach out to the outside handle to open the door.

Looking at the trains running today, it seems that the only opening windows on some are tiny fold out panels up high.


Even the subway cars of yesteryear seemed more comfortable to me. One of the lines I used to ride regularly when I was young was running with the old London Underground 1959 stock, and another had the then almost-new 1973 stock.

IMHO, both of those were far better than the cars they have running today.

With the old cars that's still possible, though i don't know how many people actually do it.