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Personal Museum/collections?

MHRestorations
Does anyone else on this site have their own 'personal collection' of antiquated electrical equipment that's in too good a condition to throw away, or may be unique?


I was caused to wonder this by the 'reuse' thread. We're starting a full rewire soon on a property which has a beautiful combined service head, main switch and fuseboard, all in one unit. I can't remember who made it, I want to say Callenders (later BICC). it's light cream coloured (almost the GPO 'light straw' if anyone's familiar) and with gilded lettering stating the purpose of each 'section' (Electricity supply, main switch and 'fuses').


I fully intend to keep at least the main switch and fusebox as functional (but clearly not actually used) items, and the service head if it turns out it can't be separated from the main switch easily, or if the DNO decide. I suspect it has rewireable fuses in, and possibly even a neutral fuse, although the meter dates to the 80s so that would likely be linked out.


In any case I'll be taking detailed photos of the installation as it is before we disturb it.


My colleague regards this as timewasting and would love to destroy the old gear in a blaze of RCBOs and 18th ed. compliant boards, but I bribe him with lunch to allow me to save such relics. I feel it's part of history?


Am I alone in this respect, and if not, how out of hand can it get?


  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Scruffy buggers


    Show again at 16.00 hours when you've cleaned it up and indexed and stored reference volumes correctly (spines vertical) like proper engineers.


    Store rucksack properly, remove superfluous cardboard box for recycling


    Step to, in your own time, at the speed of 2 antelopes - carry on


    OMS




  • 0
    I think OMS, you really would not like a 'research' environment. Long ago, before the current job, I was a university research fellow, and more or less, so long as you could still get in and out, the lab counted as serviceable. Much equipment for  data logging and control of things routinely ran with the covers off and extra modification cables coming out of the box running up to the ceiling and down again to the experiment bench proper. Some offices had paperwork stacked on all available surfaces, as well as some on a few non-available surfaces too. I suspect the move to store files on computer has helped, but from recent visits, perhaps not as much as one may imagine, as there is now a proliferation of computer hardware.Generally in terms of academia, organized shelves and a clear desk is far from the common theme.

    Indeed this fellow famously said something which in translation runs along the lines of

    “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” , and he was Nobel Prize winning physicist.

    6bc456bcc5c21ddb1e837f1ab7d33edf-huge-albert.jpg

  • 0
    Spookily I am going everyday to a store that belongs to one of the famous London museums to power log around 20 distribution circuits.


    It is definitely a trip down memory lane to my old Post Office days as all the furniture is the government Remploy grey stuff, the floors are hardwood blocks and the switch-gear is Glasgow Excel off bus bars with PSA stickers on them. I was thinking that after passing through security I had stepped through a portal in to the past.


    Imagine a huge multi-floor museum with the lights turned off and no one there, stuffed full of dusty exhibits, a good location for Halloween!




  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    LoL - you may well be right Mike - I've worked in some appallingly cluttered places  - and for sure a few of my various desks around the country are the proverbial skip when I'm busy doing stuff.


    That said, I am a big believer in having one copy of what is needed and that's in a place where all who need to see, do so. I worked for an American company a while back and occasionally some of the boys with long trousers would fly over and reorganise everything. I recall one clean cut all American boy standing front and centre and asking who had copies of x or y - at which point a few unsuspecting types would dutifully troop off and bring item back (document, drawing etc). In short order there was a pile of "duplicates" of monumental proportions - within 30 days we all had a new steel desk, chair, two drawer cabinet and steel filing cabinets  - plus the obligatory manifoil Mark IV's, containing one copy of everything current - woe betide the character who decided he needed a personal copy of something. The "stuff" that went into skips was epic. From that point on we had a clean desk policy (understandably from a security perspective if nothing else) and it was enforced (usually by means of cake fines). Personally speaking, I was always perfectly happy in that kind of sterility


    Regards


    OMS


  • 0
    I have tended in that direction at times also, but never as bad as Bob Pease (https://www.electronicdesign.com/analog/what-s-all-messy-office-stuff-anyhow)

    Alasdair
  • 0

    OMS:

    Scruffy buggers


    Show again at 16.00 hours when you've cleaned it up and indexed and stored reference volumes correctly (spines vertical) like proper engineers.


    Store rucksack properly, remove superfluous cardboard box for recycling


    Step to, in your own time, at the speed of 2 antelopes - carry on




    Poor fellow cannot help it - it's how he wuz brung up. ?


    But no, I'm not going to show you my office or my workshop where there is work in progress.


    One day, I shall tidy my office. One day! ?

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