Photo and info submitted by Hemingray:

All that old stuff is pretty cool. There is an antique mall near me that sells lots of these things.

There was a company by the name of the Perkins Electric Switch Manufacturing Company that made very high quality pushbutton, toggle, and rotary switches. I'm fortunate enough to have a few in my collection, along with some very nice brass plates (also from an unknown manufacturer). The pushbutton switch was assembled into a very large "boxy" looking porcelain body - it was almost as large as the inside of a single gang box. Fitting the switch, complete with a pair of knob-and-tube wires must have been an interesting experience.

Mike (mamills)

I really enjoy seeing the old switches still in use even though they were installed 75 or more years ago.
It is proof that the basic electrical wireing is intended to last the life of the house.
I have seen push button sw with an ivory or mother-of-pearl insert in the On button.
Alan--

Yeah, old switches are real cool!*
Recently I found a rotary switch which probably dates to 1890-1900! It's not a tumbler type, simply a rotating scraper and two brass contacts. Nothing that could possibly break...
Porcelaine base (black), brass cover with some kind of brown sleeve inside (maybe very thin bakelite) and bakelite handle.
It has a 0 marking for off, a feathered arrow with a sun for both rotating direction and "on"...
Some 10 or 15 years ago, our balcony still had the original 1914 rotary switch in place (and it still works, though I took it inside to protect it from the elements).

I always liked those old fashoned push button switches, My Grandparents place had quite a few of them still left, but only one that I can remember had the mother of pearl insert in the "ON" button, which by convention in those days was the lower button, at least around here it was...
Just amazes me how equipment manufactured in those days was built to last, with some of it still in use today, and in as good a shape as it was installed. Yet, with equipment manufactured these days, you are lucky if you get a few years out of it before it wears out or burns up...

A.D

I love old style pushbutton switches. I remember my uncles house had them in every room. Built in 1909. Still worked up until his death in 1982. Wish we made things that last that long today.

mamills wrote:

I think I know what you're talking about







Those came from an old 1903 house in Los Angeles



This Bryant was from a 1927 mansion in San Diego

Randy: is that pushbutton switch a DPST? I've seen many SPST and SPDT, but not any like that.

Neat switches!! That old toggle switch really pre-dates any of my old stuff .

Mike (mamills)

[This message has been edited by mamills (edited 05-14-2006).]

That Bryant toggle looks nice! does that on/off attachment on the handle sit behind the switchplate? did it use a special plate to keep that tag from getting stuck and ripping?

Mike, I wondered the same thing. I may even be a 4-way. It's hard to see all of the wiped contacts.

On second thought, probably not. 3- ande 4-ways usually don't have a white button.

Wow! That toggle is down=on! Weird...

Some old stuff I had on my desk because I was too lazy to put it away...

The three-way receptacle is actually like a US gem tap, it can be plugged in or screwed on instead of a single face plate. The rotary switch with the hexagon knob is probably not original. I found it in a former kids bedroom, missing the cover, just two layers of wall paper. The receptacle guts belong to a receptacle matching the switch with the glass plate.

Now with a few covers off...

Note the brown paper fuses in the receptacle.

Remember that there was junk made back then. It's just that almost all of it has long since wore out or broke, and had been replaced. Thus you rarely see antique low quality equipment today.

Actually I think that piece on the toggle moves with it. so when the lever is pulled down, OFF appears in the hole on the plate, and ON when flipped up. or at least that's how it looks from here.

True, you're probably right about the toggle.

I swear I have to pay Vienna a visit someday.

One of these days I'll post some of the small collection of British electrical bits I got from a fellow radio collector.

I've only seen one of those push button switches in person at my uncles house he was renting back in the 80's....when did they stop making them and does anyone know why?

I think I'd like those better than the typical toggle switches avaliable today.

Toggle switches are probably cheaper to make - not as many moving parts.

Note Randy's pic of the Perkins pushbutton switch: Now that's a knife-blade contact, is it not? You don't see that nowadays, ever, on a snap switch. Think for a minute about why they are called "snap switches".

Nowadays, they just don't "snap" the way they used to. I remember 25 years ago, the manufacturers made a virtue of this: the "silent" light switch! (And I can remember professional curmudgeon Andy Rooney ridiculing the claim: "We have stereos that blare for blocks around, and we have 'silent' light switches!")

The reason for the loud "snap" is the very stout spring used to make and break the contacts. 100+ years ago when these switches were designed, the standard service equipment was a knife switch, and electricians practiced the habit of opening and closing them quickly to minimize the arc. It was judged that the average non-technical person could not be trusted to do this properly, so the spring (not to mention dead-front construction) was added.

Why all the fuss? Two letters: DC. 110V DC service was common in urban areas, and remained so until the middle of the 20th century. These old "snap" switches could take the brutal DC arc and keep going. Feed them AC, and they can go for 100+ years.

It's funny my memory of things electrical only goes back 25 years, when I would go to the hardware store with my dad, and guess which aisle I'd end up in? But they had a lot of stuff that I guess was archaic even then. The old DC-rated switches hung on longer than DC service did. In latter days, they were called "T-rated" (as in tungsten).

Oh yeah, and those surface-mount rotary switches? Go to the ConEd Pearl Street museum in NYC. Edison invented those.

[This message has been edited by yaktx (edited 11-02-2006).]