How many members dig into the 'old stuff'??
Living in an Edwardian era house it means I get to use this kind of wiring without it being out of place. The fabric wiring, wooden mounting blocks, and bakelite fittings just look nicer and don't constantly remind one of the cheap mass produced era of plastic and cost cutting we have today. The lighting circuit is largely original and probably because of the climate where I live the rubber/cloth wire is still as good as new. It's all encased in split seam steel conduit in the walls and roof space anyway in case something did happen.
While I've got a collection of ancient carbon and squirrel cage filament light bulbs the light output and colour temperature is pretty awful, so I draw the line at using them for lighting. The heat output of a 60W carbon filament bulb is quite a surprise when compared to a tungsten coiled coil filament. No wonder they didn't make light sockets out of wood back then. For those that have never seen a carbon filament lamp in operation, let's just say that the colour temperature is like when a modern bulb is operated at about 2/3 of normal supply voltage. And as for brightness they give about a third of the light output as the same wattage modern bulb. The 1920's squirrel cage tungsten filaments are somewhat better.
