In article ,
says...


Eire 1961-1982 (they had 625-line from 1962).


I was in Ireland in August 1961, before RTE started.

On the last day, I visited the village post office where the following
conversation took place with the elderly post mistress:

She: "Would you mind me asking how much you're after paying for the
television licence in England?"

Me: "Four pounds and a pound for the wireless licence"

She (looking rather pleased with herself) "Ah! We're only after paying
the seventeen shillings and sixpence for the wireless licence and we
don't have the television licence!"

On our way home the following day I spotted the headline on the evening
paper:

£4 TV LICENCE FROM JANUARY
Wireless licence goes up to £1

I've always wished I could have seen the look on the old lady's face
when she saw that!

--

Terry

In article , Arny Krueger
writes

I'm not so sure about rings, but the doubled voltage looks good to me given
that I would have enough appliances that ran on 240 volts to be interesting.
I don't.

Think about it - your kettle would boil in half the time :-)

A colleague went to work in the USA and complained about the weedy
kettles over there that take forever to boil. I suggested he take a UK
230V kettle over with him and run it off an extension to his stove
connection (i.e. 220V). Dunno if he ever bothered.

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In article ,
charles wrote:
The UK 405-line system was almost certainly kept going for far longer
than it really needed to be. There was probably only a handful of
people who could not receive the 625-line service. At the time, I
recall that many of us said that it would be cheaper simply to buy
that last little old lady, living in a remote valley in the middle of
nowhere, a new TV set and aerial.

unless the aerial had a 100+m cable attached it wouldn't be any use if
she really lived in a remote valley in the middle of nowhere. uhf
coverage was not universal - and still isn't.

I remember in the '50s, some villages in the Scottish Highlands paid for a
shared receiver aerial to be situated on a nearby hill.

--
*The more I learn about women, the more I love my car

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 2/6/12 11:47 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
The UK 405-line system was almost certainly kept going for far longer
than it really needed to be. There was probably only a handful of people
who could not receive the 625-line service. At the time, I recall that
many of us said that it would be cheaper simply to buy that last little
old lady, living in a remote valley in the middle of nowhere, a new TV
set and aerial.

Maybe it would have been better to have one 625 line network on VHF,
like most other countries used until analog closedown.
Of course going from 405 to 625 would have meant ther was no room for
two networks there.

gr, hwh

In article , Arny Krueger
writes

If everything is on a ring, why are there an odd number of breakers?

Both ends of the ring connect into the same breaker.

32A breaker = 16A down each leg of the ring. If each leg were fed from
its own breaker, switching one breaker off would turn the ring into a
32A radial using 16A wire! :-)

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In article , Arny Krueger
writes

The breakers are 4 pole?

No, single pole on the phase wire.

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In article , Don Pearce
writes

Try
being a little clearer next time, will you?

Terrell's a twit. Killfile fodder.

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In article , Dave Plowman (News)
writes

How are sockets connected on a radial circuit? Separate terminals for in
and out?

Yes, connecting screws each side of the socket. On the side, not on the
back, unless the socket has push-fit connectors (yuck).

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In article , says...


From http://www.hywel.org.UK/bbc2launch/

QUOTE

When BBC2 launched on April 20th 1964, ...


UNQUOTE


panto mode.

Oh no it didn't!

/panto mode

The launch of BBC2 was PLANNED for April 20th 1964 but a fire at
Battersea Power Station blacked out large areas of west London -
including the Television Centre - shortly before BBC2 was due to start.

As a result, BBC2 opened at 1130 on April 21st 1964 and the first
programme was Play School.

Nine years earlier, the BBC had wiped all news of the start of ITV off
the front pages by killing off Grace Archer in The Archers. Of course,
there was only one ITA transmitter in 1955, so only a small proportion
of the population could see it anyway.

But BBC2 started off with only one transmitter in exactly the same way
but still managed to get the 'non-event' on every front page the
following day!

I've always wondered if somebody might have been seen furtively slipping
out of the back door of Broadcasting House that Monday afternoon before
setting off to walk down to Battersea Bridge with a box of matches in
his coat pocket ...

--

Terry

In article , J. P. Gilliver (John)
writes

(Nor worse, though it sometimes was.)

NTSC = Never Twice the Same Colour. NTSC TVs had (still have?) a "Hue"
control for the user to twiddle when skin tones started looking a bit
green.

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