Hello all,

I've found an archive with old documents. Among other things, it appears that it contains bids submitted by electrical contractors in the 19th country, along with materials lists and invoices. There is a glimmer of hope for finding some kind a drawing, but hoping to find complete plans is probably too much.

This archive is owned by the state and I will have to submit requests to get each document retrieved.

Is anyone interested in seeing these documents, apart from me? I will go back next week anyway, but it will take a couple of weeks of tracking down documents this way. It's only open during office hours which is a bit of a hurdle.

Anyway, if anyone wants to see the documents, I'll have to scan them somehow which will be difficult.

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Some finds so far
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From the top of my head, here is the list of things included in a large private home in 1896. The change orders, which ended up costing more than the original bid, are included.

- Power to the lights
- Power to the two lifts (elevators)
- Power to the gate opener
- Possibly power to electroheat
- 3 (?) main panels, 10 sub panels
- 245 lightbulbs
- 2 high intensity arc lights
- Metal (steel?) conduit. Insulated!
- Boxes, like above
- Cables, double insulated, lead covered, steel armoured (if not in conduit).
- Outlets, a handful.
- Ordinary switches
- Switches with timers in the hallways. Depending on how you switched them, they gave two minutes of light or constant light.

The cover plates had to match the surrounding wall. Green marble walls with green marble switches, white marble walls with white marble or ivory cover plates. The handles were made of either oak or gold plated brass, depending of what matched the room.

In the room with walls of gold [sic!] the switch looked like a part of the wall.

I've found some details about how the panels and sub-panels were installed and how the cover plates were manufactured. (And by whom)

P.S. I have a surprise up my sleeve, [Linked Image] but to show it I have to fill out a form where it says on the top that that permission is rarely granted. [Linked Image]