Dusty Navigation
Gizmos by Category Geiger Counters & Atomic Stuff
Gizmos A - Z Alba PTV-11 Mini TV Clock Radio Archer Realistic Headphone Radio B&O Beocom 2000 Phone
B&O Beolit 609 EXP II AM Radio
Bigston PS-5 Flat Panel Speakers Bolex Paillard 155 Cine Camera BT Kingfisher Answering Machine Companion CR-313 Walkie Talkies Decimo Vatman 120D Calc Eagle International Loudhailer Gaertner Pioneer Geiger Counter General Radiological NE 029-02 Heathkit GR-70 Multiband Radio Heathkit Oxford UXR2 Kit Radio Hitachi TRK-8015 Cass Recorder ISI Rapid Abnormality Indicator Le Parfait Picture Frame Radio Linwood SImple Siren Car Alarm Micronta S-100 Signal Injector Philatector Watermark Detector Sinclair Micromatic Kit (Unbuilt) |
Magna Fumalux FL-400 Lighter & Flashlight 1955?
Well done if you spotted the catch in this otherwise flawless argument. The 2-volt battery it uses it is now obsolete, or at least very
difficult to get hold of, but there are ways around that, which we’ll come to
shortly.
Essentially it is a miniature lead-acid car
battery, but sealed, and it uses a gel, rather than a liquid electrolyte. It was
developed in the mid 1930s by a German company called Rulag and although its
primarily use was in lighters it also found its way into torches and even
powering model aircraft. The RL-4 was actually meant to be disposable. It was
cheap and had a life expectancy of 5 to 6 months in a FL-400; however, it could
be recharged several times by knowledgeable DIYers and battery sellers with the
necessary equipment.
What happened to it? The origins of the FL-400 date back to the late 1930s when a
German company, Pyrolex, developed an electric lighter that used a
torch-bulb element to ignite the wick. The company and its patents were
purchased by the Domo Company (named after its founder Doctor Mohr) in 1938,
but production was halted following the outbreak of WW II. It resumed in 1946
after securing supplies of the fine tungsten wire needed to make the ignition
coils. The same year they introduced the FL-2 the first model with a built-in
flashlight. This was the forerunner of the FL-400, which appeared a few years
later and continued in production, more or less unchanged for another 50 years,
with lots of special editions and rarities for collectors to look out for. Collecting vintage cigarette lighters has always been popular, and
for good reason. They’re small and easy to find. There are plenty to choose
from, hugely varied in design and range in price from next to nothing, to
eye-wateringly expensive. They also overlap with many other areas of interest
from precious metals and jewellery, to engineering, technology and history.
There’s something for everyone but as usual it’s a bit of a minefield, especially
if you think it's a way to make money. If you are starting out I suggest that
you keep it cheap and simple while you learn the ropes. It’s a good idea to
specialise and vintage electric and electronic lighters is as good a theme as
any, and currently there are still plenty of bargains to be had. And don’t
forget to keep one primed and handy for disasters. You never know what’s around
the corner… DATA First Seen: 1955 Original Price: £5.00 ($9.95) Value Today: £20.00 (0920) Features: Petrol lighter with battery-powered
incandescent coil ignition, built-in flashlight (3-volt lens-cap bulb), steel
case Power req. RL4/L450/RZP2, gas-tight 2-volt lead acid gel battery Dimensions: 56 x 52 x 14mm Weight:
61g Made (assembled) in: Germany Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Sawyer’s View-Master Stereoscope Model C, 1950?
What Happened To It? The View-Master has a long and eventful history but the milestones
were the coming together, in 1938, of Edwin Mayer who founded Sawyers Photo
Finishing Service in 1919, and William Gruber, a German organ maker. Both had
an interest in different elements of stereo photography and disc manufacture
and between them they came up with the View-Master name and concept. The first pre-production
models were shown at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and it was a success from
the start. However, in the early 1940s the biggest customer was the US military
who ordered 100,000 units and more than six million discs for training
purposes. One of Sawyer’s View-Master’s most successful ventures was to buy
out rival stereoscope manufacturer Tru-Vue, in 1951. In doing so they also
acquired the licensing rights to Disney and later Hanna-Barbera’s vast image
libraries. Sawyer developed a personal stereo camera in 1952, so users could
create their own discs. This also proved popular but it went out of after 10
years and is now highly sought after. Model upgrades followed, including ones
with built-in battery powered light sources, lightweight plastics replaced Bakelite
and there was even a disc projector. Following a takeover of Sawyer by General Aniline and Film in 1966
there was a noticeable increase in special edition versions and tie-ins with
popular TV series, movies and cartoons, like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The
Beverley Hill Billies, Time Tunnel, Star Trek and even our own home grown Doctor Who. In
the 70s the View-Master gained an audio facility with ‘talking discs’. The
company changed hands yet again in 1981 and was renamed VMI (View-Master
International), and again in 1989, ending up as part of Tyco Toys. VMI was
included in another merger, this time with Mattel, in 1997 and marketed under
the Fisher Price brand. In 2015 Mattel got together with Google to develop the
View-Master Virtual Reality Viewer, using a smartphone to display 3D images.
Optical viewers are still being made, though and there have been 25 different
models to date and with more 1.5 billion discs produced it is safe to say they
are not exactly rare. Viewers like the Model C can be found in abundance on ebay for as
little as £10 and there’s no shortage of discs, from all eras of the product’s
history. There are plenty of rarer View-Master
viewers, though. For example, brown Bakelite Model C’s and ones with a
border around the Patent information are worth significantly more. Discs
produced for training and promotion and accessories can also fetch a very
pretty penny. If you want to get involved there’s a lively collector’s market,
but plenty of pitfalls to avoid so do some homework before diving in. DATA First Seen: 1946 Original Price: $2.00 (around £5.00) Value Today: £20.00 (0820) Features: Stereo viewer, 7 image disc, manual
frame advance, natural light illumination (battery powered light optional),
fixed focus optics, Bakelite body Power req. n/a Dimensions: 111 x 75 x 95mm Weight: 185g Made (assembled) in: Portland USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 4 Eddyprobe II ECT Material Integrity Monitor, 1975?
The first is ECT or Eddy Current Tester; it’s one of several
techniques used in science and industry to inspect for flaws or measure the
characteristics of conductive materials – more about that in a moment. The next
one is NDT or Non-Destructive Testing. This one is self-explanatory and in
other words, means a method of testing materials without damaging or destroying
them, which is a good thing when you want to make use of whatever it is you are
testing… Back to ECT and it’s a fairly old idea. Much of the credit for it belongs
to Michael Faraday and his experiments in electromagnetism the 1830s. ECT is
based on the fact that electromagnetic fields change when brought close to
metallic objects. It’s a bit like the way metal detectors work, but with a
great deal more precision, and in this instance the detector head or probe is
usually in direct contact with the object or material concerned.
It is impressively well made. The circuit boards are hand
assembled and the internal wiring looms are impeccable, neatly tied and as good
as anything you’ll see on a high quality vintage precision instrument. That is
exactly what it is and it is clear from the number of preset controls and test
points on the two boards, which suggest that it requires a fair amount setting
up and calibration before it can be used in anger.
Following a lot of trial and error the set up procedure seems to
involve placing the probe on the surface of the material to be checked and
zeroing the meter (it is incredibly sensitive), then, slowly moving the probe over
the surface of the material whilst observing the movement of the meter. There
was a definite twitch either side of zero at the points where the paint layers
varied, and much larger deflections as it passed over the areas where the nuts
and washers were placed. Admittedly it was a far from scientific test but at
the very least it suggested that it is working and gave a hint at how useful it
would be in the hands of a experienced and knowledgeable operator. For the
record although the meter was in tip-top condition the unusual offset-centre
zero configuration made it unsuitable for easy transplantation into a Geiger
Counter. What Happened To It? ECT is still widely used for NDT but modern instruments are vastly more accurate and sophisticated thanks to computerisation and a lot of digital jiggery-pokery. There is now a vast array of increasingly specialised methods of NDT involving acoustics, X-Rays, lasers, magnetic flux, magnetic particles, microwaves, neutrons, thermal and infrared, to name just a few.
In it's day the Eddyprobe II was probably one of the go-to pieces of kit for a wide range of NDT applications but it doesn’t seem to have done Inspection Instruments Ltd. of 32 Duncan Terrace London much good. I found only a few brief references to the company on the web, nothing about their history or any other products. What little there is tapers off in the mid 1980s suggesting they were either taken over or they went out of business.
When new it must have cost several hundred pounds, possibly a great deal more
with a full set of probes. Today, and in spite of it apparently being in good
working order, it's value lies mosly in the worth of the parts it contains and the £5.00 I paid for it
is probably only a little less than it would fetch on ebay. I cannot see
collectors of vintage scientific instruments getting overly excited by it, even
though it is, apparently, quite rare, but as with most of the other exotic, unusual and plain weird scientific and
industrial artefacts featured in dustygizmos, this may end up being its one and
only appearance on the web, which, hopefully, someone somewhere may find useful
or interesting.
*Apologies for being a bit nerdy. Initialisms, as opposed to acronyms -- e.g. NASA etc.-- are the ones you can make words out of… DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1975? Original Price: £? Value Today: £10.00? (0320) Features: Eddy Current Tester (ECT),
interchangeable probe, '% calibrated depth' scaled meter, variable sensitivity and Lift Off controls, alarm indicator, carry handle, folding bench stand Power req: 4 x PP6 9 volt battery & external DC adaptor Dimensions: 206 x 140 x 160mm Weight: 2.2 kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 Minidyne Mk II TENS Machine, 1970
It’s known as Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation or TENS
and the first commercially available TENS ‘machines’ appeared in the early
1970s. It could mean that this British made Minidyne Mark II is one of the very
first of those devices; a date sticker inside the case backs up this premise.
It was made by Electro Medical Supplies, (now EMS Physio) based in Wantage, who
are still in the business of making and supplying TENS machines, amongst a
great many other medically related things. But back to the Minidyne Mk II, what
it does and how it does it.
What Happened To It? This is not dustygizmo’s first encounter with a company called EMS
(see Stammering Oscillator) and although the makers of this device previously
denied they made it, there are a great many similarities between the two items.
EMS can’t disown this one, though. Apart from anything else the maker’s label
on the back panel clearly states that it was made in Wantage -- they’re still
there -- and still in the medical
equipment business. Charles Greenham founded the company in 1924. He set up
shop in central London selling sunlamps and batteries. It appears to have been
quite successful from the get-go and expanded rapidly, moving to larger
premises in Great Portland street in 1933. EMS continued to prosper, growing
and diversifying into other areas of electrotherapy and at the same time
creating a significant export market for their products. The company eventually
outgrew its London premises and moved to Wantage in 1968. Currently it employs
more than 100 people and continues to innovate, develop and supply medical
equipment and scientific instruments. Vintage medical apparatus has always been popular with collectors
but they tend to favour older items made up until the early twentieth century.
Quack electrical devices are also in demand but for the moment at least there
appears to be little appetite for more recent products from the 70s and 80s. I
doubt that anyone would pay more than £10 for one of these, not that they turn
up very often. In fact this particular model appears to have no web presence
whatsoever. This might suggest that few were made; it may even be a
pre-production prototype given that it doesn’t have a purpose made printed
circuit board and a sticker with the number 40 on it. Either way this doesn’t
make valuable, now or in the foreseeable but its apparent rarity and the part
it played in the very early days TENS technology deserves recognition and its
appearance on these pages. DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1970 Original Price: £? Value Today: £10 (0320) Features: Single channel TENS machine, variable output (0 – 200 volts), variable
‘Surge’ (pulse rate), neon pulse indicator, screw terminals, carry handle Power req:
2 x 9 volt PP9 battery Dimensions: 200 x 158 x 130mm Weight:
1.1kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 Sanyo Memo-Scriber TRC-7040A 1981?
This Memo-Scriber was a chance find during one of my occasional
ebay trawls for tiny tape recorders. Nowadays it mostly turns up pocket
Micro-Cassette memo recorders, which are still a few years away from being
rare, or interesting. This one caught my eye, though, mainly because of the low
asking price, (£8.00), apparent good condition, unusually specific set of
functions, and the cosmetic design, which mimics larger tape-top Compact
Cassette recorders of the same age, but in miniature. It turned out to be as
good as it looked and in full working order. All it needed to make it
presentable was some light dusting and polishing. The Backspace function is still very light on its feet and sound
quality is pretty good. What Happened To It? Voice recorders have now moved firmly into the digital realm since
the first models appeared in the mid 90s and devices that can translate speech
directly into text are at or close to being a viable alternative to human
transcription. Machines using Mini and Micro Cassette formats are almost
certainly technically obsolete, as it doesn’t appear that any are being manufactured.
If so production probably stopped only comparatively recently as there are
still plenty of quite new looking models on sale in shops, on ebay and at car
boot sales. ‘New’ blank cassettes are also widely available, though the ones
I’ve seen seem a lot more expensive than they used to be, which suggests that
supplies are gradually drying up. Collectors of vintage dictating machines and
recorders do exist, though they tend to focus on the very early ‘phonograph’
types using wax discs and cylinders that first appeared in the 1920s. Notable
milestone models can also fetch fancy prices, though I suspect the hard-core
collector’s interest tails off on anything made after the mid sixties. Tape-based dictating machines, especially if they use one of the failed
first generation cartridge or cassette formats can tickle the fancies of
collectors of vintage audio equipment but the bottom line is there are no
reliable guidelines as to what machines like this Sanyo Memo-Scriber are worth
now, or in the foreseeable future. At the time of writing prices are all over
the place so if you are interested in starting a collection with an eye on
increasing value you can afford to be picky and focus on sensibly priced, good
quality working machines from well known manufacturers, preferably with their
original packaging and instructions.
DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1981? Original Price: £100? Value Today: £10 (0320) Features: Mini Cassette format, 30 minutes
recording time per side, microprocessor controlled soft-touch transport keys,
quick erase facility, variable backspace (0 – 10 seconds), 3-digit tape
counter, foot control, headphone socket (3.5mm minijack) Power req:
9 volts DC (external mains adaptor) Dimensions: 237 x 185 x 54mm Weight:
1.1kg Made (assembled) in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Playcraft Bandbox Talent Show Microphone, 1963
What Happened To It? The Playcraft brand dates back to 1949. It was created as a
subsidiary of Mettoy, founded in the 1930s by established German toy makers Arthur
Katz and Philipp Ullmannas. Both were Jewish and with help from Lord Marks (of Marks & Spencer) they moved to the UK just before the outbreak of the
Second World War. Mettoy (the name comes from metal toy) became one of the
best-known manufacturers of metal toys, including the iconic Corgi model range.
Playcraft’s brief was to develop new products, market craft kits, moulded
plastic toys and later model railway sets. The foray into radios and the
Bandbox range appears to have been fairly short-lived. It hasn’t been mentioned
in any of the company profiles I have seen so information is somewhat limited.
This is a little surprising as during 50s and 60s Mettoy and Playcraft went
through a period of rapid expansion. It became very successful and profitable,
much written about and won a raft of industry awards. It didn’t last though;
things began to go wrong in the early 70s. Following almost a decade of losses
the company went into liquidation in 1983 with some the most popular products
and brands being sold off to management buyouts and rivals. My brief research into the story behind the Talent Show Microphone has proved
almost entirely fruitless, so far. As usual contributions and corrections are
welcome. I could find no references to it on the web, no other examples have
shown up on ebay recently and it is quite possible that this will become the
first and only one featured in Google Images. It seems to safe to say,
therefore, that it is somewhat rare but on its own it is merely a curiosity and
probably not worth more than five to ten pounds. Teamed up with a Bandbox Radio
it becomes a much more interesting prospect. However, even if that is also in
good condition and in working order, preferably with its original box, they may
not be worth a great deal more. Hopefully, though this won’t be the end of the
story. DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1963 Original Price: 25 shillings (£1.10) Value Today: £10 (0220) Features: Hand held mono dynamic microphone.
3.5mm minijack connector, 5 metre connecting cable Power req: n/a Dimensions: 190 x 48mm Weight: 65g (ex cable) Made (assembled) in: Great Britain Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 Microflame Model B Gas Welding Torch, 1970?
. The Microflame was a versatile and weirdly common piece
of kit in that far, far away galaxy, making several cameo appearances in Star Wars
Episode IV - A New Hope, released in 1977.
What Happened To It? Production of the Microflame began in 1966. It was the brainchild
of Leonard E. Laske from Minneapolis, where he established a factory to make
them. Little has been written of its history except that at some point,
probably in the early to mid 1990s, it looks like the company was bought out by
Radio Shack who marketed it under their Archer brand name. Radio Shack
collapsed in 2007, though the re-branded Microflame disappeared from their
catalogues in 2001. Microflame may be no more but butane gas powered blowtorches live
on, both as DIY and kitchen tools. Some of them are even smaller than the
Microflame but as far as I am aware it still holds the record for temperature,
thanks to the extra firepower from the nitrous oxide cylinder. Temperatures of
3000 degrees and above are still achievable but only from much larger,
professional and industrial dual-cylinder outfits, none of which fit easily
into the hand, or pocket. Original vintage Microflame kits appear to quite
collectable, if ebay prices and the healthy demand in the US are anything to go
by. Sales regularly achieve between £50 and £150, depending on the type, age
and condition. They appear only occasionally on ebay UK and the two fairly
rough looking examples I followed sold for only £10.00 and £18.00. It is
notable that the US offerings with the highest prices prominently mention the
Star Wars connection so there may well be a few fast bucks to be made if you
can find one cheap enough at your local boot sale or antique market. DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1966 Original Price: £25.00 Value Today: £30 (0220) Features: Micronox (Nitrous Oxide) &
Butane gas welding torch, 28000 C flame temperature, rotating flame
‘wand’ interchangeable nozzles, soldering iron attachment Power req:
n/a Dimensions: 138 x 50 x 30mm Weight:
336g Made (assembled) in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Intel Play QXP Computer Microscope, 1999
This QX3 was a review sample for one of the computer and games
magazines I was working on at the time. It was briefly popular with my pre-teen
children and may even have had a small part to play in my son’s future career
path. However, at the time our home was awash with fancy hardware and software on test,
including a lot of games and these proved even more enticing and after a few
weeks of regular use the microscope ended up in a box in the loft. I was
disappointed to discover that it would have nothing to do with any current or recent PC running
Windows 7 or later. There are a couple of ways to get it going again though.
The simplest method is to install Windows Virtual Machine (free from Microsoft)
and load up a copy of XP – assuming you still have one – in effect you’re running
Windows XP inside Win 7 or 10, and can install old programs and drivers as if
it was an actual XP computer. Otherwise there are a number of updated drivers
lurking on the web, though none of the ones I tried worked. It also runs quite
smoothly on Linux, as a camera input, but without the control software. Image
quality is pretty good considering the image sensor’s limited capabilities and
the auto exposure systems do an excellent job of adjusting for changes in light
levels and the reflectivity and colour of specimens. Although this one had been
quite well used in its time the fact that it still worked wasn’t at all
surprising. Build quality is outstanding and it is capable of standing up to a
lot of rough treatment. What Happened To It? The QX3 and a number of other Intel Play products were developed
in collaboration with toy maker Mattel in 1998. The joint venture, known as
Smart Toy Lab, was a bold attempt to combine Intel’s chip and tech savvy with
Mattel’s expertise in designing in marketing toys, potentially opening up new
markets for both companies. The QX3 was the first product under the Intel Play
banner. It was supposed to be followed by Play 2MeCam, a device fitted with an
RF tag reader that allowed children to scan their toys, which would direct the
PCs to visit websites linked to the toys. The original design proved too
complex and fraught with problems over Internet safety and security. A modified
Me2Cam was later released as a combined PC camera and gaming system, allowing
the user to interact with a small number of specially written games with
gestures and by ‘touching’ objects. In spite of the QX3 becoming the top
selling multimedia toy of 1999, and several other innovative products reaching
the market the Smart Lab project was closed down in 2002. It was sold to Prime
Entertainment, who rebranded it as Digital Blue. Intel Play QX3s and the QX5 – an upgraded QX3 developed by Digital
Blue -- can still be found online, though it appears that production stopped
some time ago. All of the models I have seen suggest that it is only compatible
with Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. This makes them prehistoric, not to say
practically useless in terms of the PC, smartphone and tablet technology of the
past 15 - 20 years. Yes they can still be used with a bit of faffing around but
it’s not much of a selling point when you consider that there are now countless
digital microscopes and cameras available with vastly superior performance, selling
for as little as £10.00. Nevertheless, the QX3 still has a lot of retro charm and
is genuinely fun to play with, if only briefly. If you want a QX3 you shouldn’t
have any trouble finding one on ebay for £10.00 or less. Sadly, and for the
foreseeable future it won’t be much of an investment but much as I hate to say
it, it wouldn’t take much to convert it into a rather fetching table lamp… DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1999 Original Price: £100 Value Today: £10 (0220 Features: CCD colour image sensor 320 x 240
pixels, 10x 60x & 200x optical magnification, moveable specimen platform,
dual illuminators (miniature incandescent bulbs), Power req:
USB powered Dimensions:
270 x 165 x 125mm Weight:
800g Made (assembled) in: China Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Mullard OC Series Transistors 1952 – 1978
What Happened To Them? As soon as Germanium transistors were developed that were capable
of handling high currents and frequencies valves (or vacuum tubes as they call
them across the pond) became virtually obsolete except for the most specialised
applications. Transistors changed the world but low power Germanium types
tended to be electrically fragile and easily damaged by high voltages and
static discharges. Fortunately a more robust type of transistor was already in
development by the early 1960s and highly purified silicon proved to be a
vastly superior semiconductor replacement. Nevertheless Germanium transistors
remained in production until the late 1970s and silicon was even used in OC
series types like the OC201 and 207. However, to avoid confusion Mullard
changed its component prefixes to AC for Germanium and BC for silicon. There is a small community of collectors of vintage transistors
and electronic components and very early Germanium types can sell for three and
four figure sums. The big bucks are generally reserved for extremely rare
prototypes, pre-production samples and short–lived or experimental devices.
Don’t get too excited, though, they are not the sort of thing you’re likely to
stumble across at a car boot sale, unless you are extremely lucky and know what
you are looking at. Tens of millions of Germanium transistors were made so
there is no shortage of them on ebay, either in NOS (new old stock) form, or
inside old radios etc., but there are a few sought after types that can sell
for several pounds. These include unused vintage transistors, especially if
they come with their original packaging and more specifically OC44s and OC45s,
which, thanks to their often-poor noise characteristics found their way into
guitar ‘Fuzz’ boxes. The result is a very particular sound that can get some
serious musicians quite excited… DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1952 Original Price: £5.00 – “0 Value Today: £50 – £1000 (0120) Features: Low power audio, intermediate and
radio frequency germanium junction transistors, glass and metal encapsulations Power req: n/a Dimensions: 14.4 x 4.9mm (30mm lead length) Weight: 0.7g Made (assembled) in: Netherlands, England, Germany & France Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 National WH-106 Body Hearing Aid.1975?
Before we get started I have to say that I
am fortunate enough to have reasonably good hearing, so far... Impairment and
the many treatments is not something I know a great deal about, though I became
a little wiser whilst researching this item. Nevertheless I apologise in
advance for any gaffes and inaccuracies that may follow. As usual I welcome
corrections and clarifications, which can be sent to the usual address..
What Happened To It? National, founded in Japan in 1925, are a division of the massive Matsushita Corporation. The National name was widely used up until the mid 1980s when it became National Panasonic, and then just Panasonic for most of its consumer product operations. As hearing aid technology has improved over the
years there has been a shift from body worn to behind the ear and in-ear types
though there is almost certainly still a market for larger, more powerful and
specialised designs. No doubt some users simply don’t get on with micro aids,
and prefer the simplicity of body worn types, so one way or another designs like the WH-106
haven’t gone away entirely. Looking through the assortment of vintage hearing aids appearing on ebay of a similar vintage and feature set makes it difficult to say what this one might be worth. The range of prices is unexpectedly wide, from around £20 to £350 on the days I checked. Its clear that hearing aid collecting is a specialist pursuit and potentially dangerous ground for the unwary.
The apparent rarity
of the National WH-106 counts in its favour, though the microphone mod may well
be a turn-off for serious collectors so I’m going to value it, in its present
post restoration condition, quite conservatively at £40.00. The bulk of buyers
and sellers appear to be in the US, though there is a small number of UK
sellers if you want to get involved, and prices are generally lower, and there
are big savings to be has on shipping. Most of the models I have seen date from the
fifties through to the eighties – arguably the golden era of the pre-digital
hearing aid. However, there is another category of hearing aids that qualify as
antiques and these include passive hearing devices, like ear trumpets from the
eighteenth and nineteenth century through to purely electrical designs based on
telephone technology, and valve based models, the earliest of which appeared in
the 1920s and lasted until the early 50s. These are of considerable interest to
a much wider group of collectors due to their increased rarity and historical
importance so, inevitably, they command significantly higher prices. DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1975? Original Price: £? Value Today: £40.00 (1019) Features: Body worn transistorised hearing
aid, built in electret microphone, magnetic earpiece, T-Coil compatible, rotary
volume control, 3-position sensitivity control Power
req: 1 x 1.5v
AA cell Dimensions: 70 x 43 x 18mm Weight: 34g Made
(assembled) in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 ISI Rapid Abnormality Indicator Type 4A, 1955?
I took this to be a clue to its purpose,
suggesting that the meter is hermetically sealed to prevent the escape or
ingress of liquids that might affect a measurement. The inside of the meter’s
glass cover has become discoloured and originally I thought this might be due
to some sort of chemical reaction with whatever was being tested. Labelling on
the meter dial added to the idea that it was somehow concerned with analysing
toxic or noxious substances. These include ‘Chloride %’ and the meter scale,
which is calibrated 0-100 ‘MHOS x 10-4. According to Wikipedia MHOS
is a measurement of material hardness, not to be confused with MHOs, which is a
measure of electrical conductance (the reciprocal and backward spelling of Ohm,
the measure of electrical resistance). In the context of this instrument the
latter definition sounds rather more likely, measuring the electrical
properties of a liquid or gas.
Condition-wise it is in pretty good shape, it’s
obviously designed to withstand rough usage and also well protected
against moisture. Sadly the power supply is stone dead and all my tests suggest
that the vibrator has failed. It’s a sealed module and taking it apart would be
difficult without damaging the contents so it’s best left alone. Other parts
have probably degraded with age but without being able to get at the sensor or
whatever is inside the hand-held unit it will have to remain in its present
inert, but quite presentable condition. What Happened To It? ISI or Industrial Scientific Instruments Ltd
seem to have come and gone without trace. A couple of US and Indian companies with
similar names turned up in a lengthy web search but none of them appeared to
have any connections with whoever made this instrument. As you might have
guessed testing for impurities in milk has moved on since the days of the
Abnormality Indicator and now include a wide range of factors, including
chemicals and microbial contaminants, as well as quality
factors, like acidity, fat and vitamin content, which are all important in
cheese making, for example. Comprehensive tests require a lot of fancy lab
equipment but there is still a big demand for small, portable instruments that
can be used in the field, as it were. The big question, of course concerns its value
and since I have absolutely no idea, I’ve put it at the fiver that I paid for
this one. Although it is clearly unusual and this is the only one – apart from
that ebay photo – known to exist I doubt very much that it’s the
sort of thing any sane person would seek to collect There is a healthy market
for vintage agricultural implements and artefacts but the Anomaly Indicator
doesn’t seem to fit into any of the established categories. It doesn’t work,
and even if it did it wouldn’t do anything especially useful that I can see; it
wouldn’t even make a particularly interesting novelty table lamp but to a weird
gadget collector -- the gadget, not me -- and with a name like that it has to be worth
something, probably around £5.00… DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1955? Original Price: £? Value Today: £5.00 (0819) Features: portable chloride
contaminant measuring apparatus, analogue meter display, separate battery and
power supply module, on/off switch, meter zero adjust knob Power req. 6 volts DC proprietary battery? Dimensions:
230 x 88 x 90mm (meter/sensor), 220 x 95 x
48mm (batt/vibro box) Weight: 1.7kg Made (assembled) in: Britain Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 Pulvelec Cabinet Battery No 10a, 1925
-comes-around vintage technology. In other words old gadgets that have been re-invented – sometimes several times over – and often touted as the next big thing.
Old is the operative word in the case of the Pulvelec Cabinet Battery No
10A. A label inside the case bears the date 1925 but its predecessors go way
back, to the mid 1800s and apparently even earlier. More about that later on.
Essentially it’s a device for generating high voltages that are applied to the skin and body with the aim of curing a range of ailments. It’s a pretty extensive list too, here’s what the Pulvelec’s instruction leaflet reckons it’s good for:
Alopecia, acne, anaemia, faulty blood
circulation, bladder and kidney troubles, constipation, indigestion, gastritis,
muscular atrophy, neuritis, sciatica, neuralgia, neurasthenia, nervous
exhaustion, paralysis, paraplegia, hemiplegia, spinal cord disorders,
rheumatism, lumbago, arthritis, gout, nasal catarrh and middle ear
catarrh.
If you haven't already guessed it's a fine example of 19th century Quack medicine. But there's a twist. Whilst there is no way it's an effective treatment for most of the items on the list, self-administered electric shocks have proved to be a successful method of pain relief (TENS or transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation); there are also modern electric shock machines for toning your muscles, dealing with spots, pimples and saggy skin, even energising dangly body parts -- you'll can work that one out yourself - not to mention numerous applications in mainstream medicine, including ECT or electro convulsive therapy, which is a recognised treatment for certain mental health conditions.
What Happened To It? The manufacturing date of 1925 is based on the
makers label inside the case, which says ‘Pulvermacher & Co. Established in
1848. Foremost in 1925’. Since manufacturer’s labels are rarely used to predict
future events it is probably safe to assume that it is a year or two older than
that. The first mention of the company’s founder, Isaac Pulvermacher, a
physicist from Vienna, relates to his ‘Hydro-electric Belt’. This contraption
consists of a belt holding a number of small batteries. It was first shown at
the World’s Fair at London’s Crystal Palace in 1851. Apparently it applied a
‘titillating’ current to the skin. If contemporary reports are to believed it
was bought by celebrity uses, including Charles Dickens. Apparently he was
advised to try it, to relieve the foot pain he suffered on his reading tours in
the 1860s. It’s not certain if he actually tried it as he died soon after placing
the order. For the record Pulvermacher didn’t invent the electric shock machine
and there are mentions of electric shock treatment going as far back as 48 BC.
It seems that Roman Emperor Claudius’s doctor recommended applying electric
eels to his head as a way of combating the pain of migraines. Most likely this
would have been a permanent fix… The late 1800s, through to the 1930s was the heyday of Quack remedy machines like the Battery Cabinet. There were hundreds of different designs. Many, like the Pulvelec use transformers, others have hand-cranked generators or magnetos, or simply a large number of interconnected batteries. Electric shock boxes of all types appeal to a very wide assortment collectors. They include quack medicine enthusiasts, those interested in Victorian scientific, medical and electrical instruments and not forgetting Steampunk fans. The latter are especially taken by things in wooden boxes with lots of shiny brassware, switches and dials. They all have value, and fine and unusually
elaborate examples can change hands for hundreds of pounds. This humble little box isn’t an
especially rare example, though, and it seems that quite a few of them were made.
I've briefly monitored prices on ebay and they have varied widely between as little as £25 up to £100,
so a fixer-upper like this one could be quite a good investment. If you don’t
like getting your hands dirty and taking on a potentially challenging
restoration job then be prepared to pay quite a bit more for a presentable one
that works and comes with all of its accessories. Either way, my last piece of advice, gained from personal experience, is don’t try it on
yourself...! DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1925 Original Price: £6 6s Value Today: £40.00 (0719) Features: therapeutic high
voltage generator, adjustable output approx 300 – 800 volts, interchangeable
contact heads & wristband, automatic switch-off, leather carry handle Power req. 6 volt dry cell? Dimensions:
155
x 130 x 130mm Weight: 1kg Nattex Copper Forming Dental Outfit, 1960?
Web searches using combinations of keywords
including ‘Nattex’, ‘Cottrell & Company’, and ‘Copper Forming Dental’ drew
an almost complete blank. This is clearly a rare and very unusual piece of equipment and
it also suggests that Cottrell & Co disappeared or were taken over some time
ago. The one and only lead was a possible connection to a present day company called
Wrights Dental. The Cottrell name is linked with Wrights but
their website makes no mention of a past merger or takeover and at the time of
writing I am waiting to hear from them if there is any connection. Updates to
follow if they or anyone else responds.
And so to it’s most recent and only known
history, which began when it came into my possession, at a large Midlands
antique fair. I spotted it fairly soon after arrival but passed it by as it
looked a bit boring and there was bound to be many more interesting things to
buy. There weren’t, so I returned to the stall just before leaving and wasn’t
at all surprised to see it was still there. After a brief haggle the
stallholder, who, like me, had no idea what it was settled on £8.00. That was a
bit more than I wanted to pay but it had been a fairly quiet day and even if it
was a total write-off there might be some useful vintage parts inside the box. The case paintwork was in a terrible state but
it responded well to a strip down, a good clean up and a quick respray with
some white car paint. Inside it was just a bit dusty. Although everything
appeared to be in good order there was no way I was going to connect it to the
mains. The wiring is a scary rats-nest and there are simply too many things that can go wrong; I’ve had my fair
share of mains jolts and a blown Selenium rectifier is not something I ever
want to smell again… What Happened To It? This is all conjecture but I assume that
Cottrell & Company of London W1 disappeared or was taken over 30
or 40 years ago as there is no record of the business or any of its products
anywhere on the web; at least none that I could find. Equally there’s nothing
about Nattax or Copper Forming, in relation to dentistry or denture
manufacture, so it seems likely that this was a short-lived fad in the world of false teeth fabrication or replaced by some other processes. It
is possible that this is the only one of its kind still in existence and in an ideal world it should be worth a great deal of money. Sadly that is rarely the case,
as least as far as weird old gadgets are concerned. So unless an eccentrically wealthy
collector of vintage dental apparatus wants to make me an offer, my valuation
of £10, is probably not far off the mark. To be brutally honest it is practically useless, however, I can see a way of making it
worth a few bob. Whilst I normally condemn the conversion of
vintage items into wacky retro table lamps, in this case I might make an
exception. It wouldn’t be too difficult to do and relatively easy to make the
modifications non-destructive and reversible – in case it does turn out to be a
valuable artefact. It should also be possible to give the knobs, switch and
indicator lamp something useful to do by incorporating a dimmer switch, and
maybe even get that meter moving again, turning dull-as-ditchwater dental into funky ornamental... DUSTY DATA First Seen: 1960? Original Price: £? Value Today: £10 (0619) Features: variable DC power
supply, selenium rectifier, rheostat, 0 – 100mA current meter, range switch, power on warning
light Power req. 230VAC Dimensions:
260 x 168 x128 mm Weight: 1.8kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 Hohner 9806 Organetta ‘Table’ Organ, 1958
On the top of the case there’s a folding music
stand, and on the underside, a green metal box houses the fan motor. It seems
there was no room inside so in order for the Organetta to stand upright on a
flat surface, and allow room for the sound to escape through vents on the
underside, the makers fitted three short tubular metal legs. Unfortunately two
of them were missing on this one but it’s a very simple matter to fabricate
replacements from some thin pipe.
What Happened To It? The German company Hohner have been in the musical instrument business since 1857. It was founded by one Matthias Hohner who began by making Harmonicas. Within a few years the company had become the world’s largest manufacturer of mouth organs.
Over the years Hohner developed a range of wind-driven instruments. These included
accordions and melodeons and by the 1950s it had begun diversifying and
building electric and acoustic guitars. During the late 50s Hohner started making larger organs
and it was around this time the Organetta appeared. During the 1960s Hohner progressed into electronic keyboards and synthesisers. They’re still at it, with a long and impressive list of famous names -- including The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder, to name just a few -- using or lending their names to special
edition instruments. Green Organettas – and that seems to be the
only colour used on this model – turn up on ebay from time to time but it’s
difficult to get a handle on prices. These are exceptionally well-made and very
useable musical instrument but prices seem rather modest, typically between £50
and £80. That’s not a lot for such an unusual item and by rights examples in
good condition and full working order should be going for a fair bit more. For some reason later models, like the Organetta
3 (early 60s?) – also wind driven, but with a grille on the top of the sound
box -- seem to attract more interest and higher prices. Possibly they are a
little louder and regarded as more functional. It shouldn’t matter, though,
this one is loud enough for personal use, and it wouldn’t be difficult to mike
it up. My advice to bands seeking an unusual cheesy sound and distinctive look
is to get one! Just make sure it’s prominently featured in the video, and
hopefully my £5.00 will turn into a worthwhile investment. DUSTY DATAFirst Seen: 1958 Original Price: £30? Value Today: £50 (1118) Features Wind driven
miniature polyphonic organ, 2½-octave keyboard, mechanical volume, folding
music stand, lacquered hardwood case Power req. 220 volts AC mains Dimensions: 410 x 250 x 130mm Weight: 3.4kg Made (assembled) in: Germany Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 7 My Power 25-Watt Megaphone, 1970
Obviously it didn’t it work and there was no
way it could have done so for at least a decade, thanks to my old enemy, a
leaky battery. It hadn’t been too serious, though and a few drops of acidic
goop had eaten away a rivet holding the spring in place. The leaky
battery must have been removed fairly quickly after it had been discovered so
the damage was limited. There had clearly been no attempt to use it for some
years and the contact pins on the bespoke 2-pin external power connector were
coated with a thin film of rust. That was confirmed by several generations of
dead spiders inside the unit (what do they eat?). After a general clearout I
hooked it up to a bench power supply and it gradually came back to life as the
electrolytic caps re-formed (another sure sigh it had been dormant for years).
The amp perked up quite quickly but the siren took a while to get going before
it managed a continuous howl. I was able to make up a new contact spring from
one salvaged from an old torch. It took a while to sort out the battery power,
though due to some light corrosion on the other contact rivets and pads but now
it’s fully functional, very loud and ready to go. What Happened To It? The My Power brand, just about visible on a
faded sticker on the side of the main unit, is unknown to me or -- it seems --
the Internet. I am inclined to think that it came from the same factory making
Eagle branded products and I have seen several near identical models, but with
different names and logos suggesting it has been widely badge-engineered. This
isn’t a surprise and it is likely that there are now, and has only ever been a
handful of companies making what is a fairly specialised product with a very
limited market. Over the years megaphones haven’t changed very
much and modern ones are not that different to this one, though for a given
size they tend to pack in more powerful amplifiers and extra features, like a
recording facility. Price wise they cost about the same nowadays, relatively
speaking, as they did 50 years ago. That is reflected in the current value of
vintage models, which is next to nothing to maybe £20 to £30 for one in good
shape that still works. Real old-timers, from the 40s or 50s do have some
value, though, but they appear to be few and far between on auction sites like
ebay. There does seem to be a small collectors market in the US, though but the
big money is reserved for unpowered – i.e. shout-through – megaphones adorned
with advertising slogans, sports team logos, TV and movie characters and so on.
If you want to become a collector the good news is you won’t find too much in
the way of competition, but you’ll be doing it for the love of the technology,
rather then a way to make money. Nevertheless, never pass up the chance to own
one – especially if it is selling for less than a fiver. A megaphone is one of
those things that you think you’ll never need, until the day you do, then
you’ll wonder how you ever got by without one. DUSTY DATAFirst Seen: 1970? Original Price: £30? Value Today: £10.00 (1018) Features 25 watts
output, 8-transistor amplifier, built-in siren, detachable feedback cancelling
microphone, 2 x PTT switches (pistol grip & microphone), mic volume,
external power socket, carry strap Power req. 8 x 1.5-volt C cells Dimensions:
370 x 225 x 300mm Weight: 1.9kg Made (assembled) in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 7 Airlite 62 Binaural Headset (1985)
Unlike most things appearing in dustygizmos
this one came from an actual shop, and a remarkable one at that in Lincoln (J.
Birkett in Steep Hill, down from the Cathedral). They specialise in vintage radio
and electronics and a lot of interesting avionics devices. There’s always
something in the window, or inside that I didn’t know I needed and can’t bear
to leave behind. These Airlites were a real bargain at just £5.00 and it took a
great deal of will power (and a glaring missus) not to buy more. They were
clean, in only slightly used condition, and good working order. My intention
was to modify them for general aviation use but somehow they ended up in the to-do
box, but I definitely will get around to it one day. What Happened To It? Clement Clarke started out making and supplying
aviation headsets in the 1950s. Nowadays they’re called Clement Clarke
Communications and are part of the MEL Group of aviation specialist companies.
The Airlite 62 along with several other aviation headset and microphones are
still in production and whilst there have been a number of modifications over
the years they are recognisably based on the original design. Prices vary enormously
but if you want a new one you can expect to pay the thick end of £400 for a
basic configuration. On the second-hand market, as this one ably demonstrates,
they can sell for as little £5.00, up to £100 or more for one in tip-top
condition and configured for GA use, or a specific aircraft type. To be honest
it’s not a very big market and prices in general tend towards the lower end of
the range but you don’t need an aircraft to use one. There are several articles
on the web showing how to modify them for more earthly applications, like
computer gaming and ham radio. I don’t think they have much of a future in home
audio or Hi-Fi; cramming in decent quality drivers could be quite challenging
but I have no doubt someone, somewhere has tried it. DUSTY DATAFirst Seen: 1975? Original Price: £400? Value Today: £30 (0818) Features: Binaural (twin)
cushioned earphones (magnetic type 300 ohm impedance), adjustable boom
microphone with detachable/interchangeable mic cartridge (electret), external mic
connector, adjustable cushioned headband, 6-pole 5.5mm jack connector Power req. n/a Dimensions: 220 x 90 x 240mm Weight: 420g Made (assembled) in: UK Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Viking ‘Sol Invictus’ Metal Detector, 1975?
Nowadays it can be a very expensive business with top-end equipment selling for thousands of pounds; but back in the 1970s, when this Viking Sol Invictus model first appeared, it was an altogether more modest hobby. The 70s and 80s was one of metal detecting’s periodic golden ages, with dozens of affordably priced models coming onto the market. This was due, at least in part, to advances in electronics and rapidly falling prices thanks to the efforts of far-Eastern manufacturers. However, for once detectors from British companies, like Viking were establishing a strong presence in the market, often with high performance (though not always very pretty) designs like this one from Viking.
Incidentally, the name ‘Sol Invictus’ (unconquered
Sun) refers to a Roman Sun god and his likeness, along with the emperor of the
day often appeared on Roman coins, and the sticky label on the front of this
detector.
Luckily it was the sort of grime that responded
well to a rub down with household detergents and a scouring sponge. The metal
pole regained its shine with the application of Brasso, elbow grease and
several yellow dusters. The plastic housings for the coil and electronics had
done an excellent job of protecting the innards from moisture and all it needed
to get it going was a few squirts of contact cleaner on the two tuning
controls. It works, probably as well as the day it was made, and was able to
detect a 5-pence piece at a distance of 5cm; 2cm when buried in light soil.
Having comprehensively swept my back garden with metal detectors in the past I
wasn’t hopeful of finding anything new but thanks to some recent weeding I
found a new bare patch to explore and swiftly located a long-lost teaspoon
buried at a depth of around 10cm and closer to the surface, a badly decomposed
pre-decimal penny, so it’s already starting to pay its way… What Happened To It? Metal detectors have been around for a
surprisingly long time, since 1881 in fact, when Alexander Graham Bell – of
telephone inventing fame -- designed a machine to locate a bullet lodged inside
US President James Garfield. He had been shot in an attempted assassination but
unfortunately it wasn’t found in time. Apparently Bell’s ‘Induction Balance’
apparatus was confused by the springs in the bed he was lying on and Garfield
later died of an infection from the wound. The first purpose-designed portable
instruments appeared in the 1930s and developments came thick and fast during
and after the Second World War as they were used by the military to find and
clear mines. The next significant advance in the technology
came in the 1950s, following the development of the transistor in 1947. This
rapidly led to many new and increasingly advanced systems for locating and
identifying buried metal objects, though without doubt the biggest impact of
the transistor in the early days was to bring down prices and turn what was
previously a highly specialised military and industrial tool into an
inexpensive consumer product. Viking
started making metal detectors in the1970s and they’re still at it, with some
smart looking and keenly priced designs, aimed at both recreational and
industrial users. The story behind this Sol Invictus model is still a bit
vague, at the time of writing the company had yet to respond to my enquiries
regarding its official model designation, launch date and subsequent
replacement but if and when I hear from them I’ll include an update. Collecting vintage metal detectors has yet to
take off as a hobby in its own right but there is definitely a healthy market
for ex-military equipment, especially valve-based designs from WW II and
subsequent conflicts. Metal detectors from the 60s onwards do not generate
much, if any interest, yet they were an important part of the story of this
interesting technology. Moreover, providing they work, some models, and this
includes this early Viking, can still earn their keep. The lack of demand for
older examples also means prices are low and its not unknown for disillusioned
owners to part with relatively recent and much more advanced models at car boot
sales for just a few pounds. DUSTY DATAFirst Seen:
1975? Original Price:
£25.00? Value Today:
£5.00 (0618) Features:
Twin-coil VLF type
detector, rotary controls: On/Off & Fine Tune, Course (Coarse) Tuning,
standard Jack headphone socket, 55mm speaker Power req.
1 x 9 volt PP3 battery Dimensions:
length: 860mm, search
head: 165 x 20mm, main unit: 230 x 60 x 70mm Weight: 1kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 8 Connevans LA5 Loop Amplifier, 1983
This LA5 came from a local car boot sale and
the fact that it doesn’t look very interesting, and the seller didn’t know
anything about it accounted for the asking price of just £1.00. I must admit
that I had only the vaguest idea about what it was for, but that was what
interested me. Even if it turned out to be totally useless, it was worth a quid
for the smart little box and a mains plug… The condition was generally very
good; all it needed was a clean up and a minor repair to replace a missing
piece of veneer on the wooden case. With a coat of good quality wax polish it now looks almost as good as new. I am fairly sure that it
works, at least there was no bangs, smoke or nasty smells when it was powered up.
Unfortunately I have been unable to fully test it though, being currently lucky
enough to have very good hearing. The handful of sufferers that I know either
shout and ask me to speak up a lot, or have tiny in-ear digital hearing aids
that do not have the T-Coil feature. What Happened To It? Connevans, by Royal Appointment as suppliers of
audio equipment to Her Maj., no less, are still actively engaged in
manufacturing and supplying equipment for the hard of hearing, as well as other
disabilities. They also supply schools and colleges and if you ever find
yourself needing a several times life size anatomical model of the ear, eye,
brain or larynx you’ll know where to go… By the way, the name comes from its
founders, Connie and Meurig Evans, who founded the company in 1961. It remains
a family concern and is now based in Merstham in Surrey. I can be sure that the LA5 shown here was made in 1983, thanks to a Quality Control sticker on the PCB, signed and dated by ‘Linda’. However, until recently that was about all I could say about this model’s back-story. There is nothing about it on the Connevans website, or indeed anywhere on the web. However, I contacted the company they have been very helpful filling in the blanks. As I suspected this model was intended for domestic applications and was in production from around 1981/2 until 1996 and cost around £45.00. It was designed cover an area of approximately 5 x 5 metres, using twin core bell-wire, either in a single or double loop configuration. I often suggest that oddball vintage devices like this may one day excite the interest of future gadget collectors and be worth something. Not this time. I'm confident that the LA5 has an almost zero chance of becoming a sought-after collectible and if I were to sell it, I would be lucky to get my money back. Even though it probably still works it is unlikely to perform as well as a more up to date model, and it’s not exactly a conversation piece, or even much use as a doorstop. What it is, though, is unusual, not to say quite rare. It's one of those anonymous behind the scenes items of technology and this is quite possibly its one and only public appearance. Who knows, it might even be the last one left in captivity and thanks to the persistence of Internet archives it will never be completely forgotten, so that has to be worth something? DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1981 Original Price: £45 Value Today: £1.00 (0618) Features: T-Coil
audio induction loop transmitter, TBA810 power amp & TL071 pre-amp chips,
microphone & aux (line) inputs (3.5mm jack), dual loops (2.5 ohm
impedance), rotary volume/gain on-off, power on indicator Power req.
240VAC 50 Hz Dimensions:
155 x 160 x 80mm Weight: 1.4kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 9 Gemmy George W. Bush Talking Figure, 2003
Although not yet a proper vintage gadget in the dustygizmos tradition, bear with me and take this as a timely heads-up because
The George W. Bush Collector’s Edition Animated Figure might be well on its way
to becoming one. It first appeared in the early noughties, a year or two into
George Dubya’s presidency. Even before he became the leader of the Free World,
as Governor Bush, he had form for saying unintentionally funny (and often quite
worrying things), though to be fair, over the years a lot of what he is
purported to have said was either made up or wrongly attributed to him. This
clearly didn’t worry Gemmy Industries, the US company responsible for this doll
and a lot of other animated celebrity figures in their Pop Culture Series.
This one was a boot sale find, priced at a
haggle-proof 50 pence, probably because the battery cover was missing. This
hardly mattered, they stay put without it, and as I later discovered, it was in
full working order, needing nothing more than a good dusting and wipe-over with
a damp cloth. How it came to be in the wilds of Dorset I will never know but
since – as far as I am aware -- they were never officially sold in the UK is
was probably brought back as a holiday souvenir What Happened To It? Gemmy Industries came into being in 1984, in
Dallas Texas and from then until now it has specialised in animated figures,
novelty products and character inflatables. They also market an enormous range
of peculiarly American items like ‘Halloween Porch Greeters’ and ‘Yard Décor’ plus
the kind of completely over the top illuminated Christmas house decorations
that can be seen from space. The animated Pop Culture series, of which George
W. Bush was just one example, appears to have been manufactured in China. They
were in production from 2002 to 2004 and included the likes of Louis Armstrong,
Frank Sinatra, Rocky Bilboa and Lucille Ball. Incidentally, several copycat and
counterfeit designs appeared when production came to an end and these are
sometimes misleadingly attributed to Gemmy. The clever caricatures, sharp
one-liners and animation are YouTube gold and it didn’t take long for the
short-lived Pop Culture series, to gain a following in the US, and spawn a
healthy collectors market plus several websites devoted to the subject. They are still quite rare in the UK and George
W. Bush and his friends make only occasional appearances on ebay but because
they are not widely known or appreciated on this side of the pond, prices can
be quite modest. Prices on the US ebay site vary enormously but it’s easy to
spot the most sought after ones, with mint, boxed Santa-suited Bing Crosbys
approaching three-figure sums. George W. Bush clearly isn’t anywhere near as
appealing and they can be found for between £10 and £20, but beware of high shipping
charges to the UK, which can double or treble the final cost. A short
production run, finite supply and iconic characters can be a catalyst for
steady price increases. Maybe not so much for George W, but old reliables, like
Sinatra, Armstrong, Crosby, Abbot and Costello, James Brown and John Belushi
(in full Animal House get-up), will always be in demand and worth grabbing, and if you see one in
its original box, at a sensibly low price, there could be money to made
selling them back to US collectors… DUSTY DATAFirst seen:
2003 Original Price:
$19.99 (around $27 or
£20 in 2018 money) Value Today:
£25 (0518) Features:
Moving head and mouth,
20 funny and 5 inspirational ‘quotes’, faux leather jacket, denim jeans check
shirt, DC connector Power req.
3
x 1.5 v AA cells or 4.5v DC adaptor Dimensions:
330 x 140mm Weight:
450g Made (assembled) in: China Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 7 Linwood Simple Siren Car Alarm, 1984
Back then car self-fit alarms were fairly
simple affairs and most, including this one, were triggered by a small drop in
the car’s battery voltage. This could be caused by the courtesy light coming
on,when a door is opened, or switching on the headlights or sidelights. Other
types of intruder sensors were also available, like ‘tremblers’, which
responded to movement, ultrasonic motion detectors and concealed pressure
switches under the carpets and inside the driver’s seat. A keyswitch located on
the outside of the car or, in this case, the driver turning on the ignition
disables the alarm. A variable entry delay stops the alarm going off straight
away. Typically the alarm box or siren module would be mounted under the
bonnet, so an additional switch might be fitted to trigger the alarm if it was
opened. Old-school alarms like this one tended to be really loud, and would
keep going until the owner turned them off, or the battery ran down. There was
a time when they went off all the time, usually around 2am, and the ones that
used overly sensitive tremblers could be set off by a light breeze, passing
lorries, drunks and scallywags. It has got better, though and nowadays car
alarms are supposed to cut-off automatically 20 minutes, in theory at least.
I found it in a big box of bits at a car boot
sale; I was actually hunting for a 12-volt mains adaptor at the time, which I
found, tangled up with the Linwood alarm’s cables. Since it looked like they
would take a while to separate I asked how much for both? Fifty pence sounded
like a reasonable price and the deal was done. The mains adaptor tuned out to
be a dud, so it went into the bin and the alarm went into the
might-be-useful-for-bits-one-day box. This was a couple of years ago, and it
came to light recently when I was looking for a small speaker. I vaguely
remember having this one and it was only when I pulled it apart that I realised
it was totally useless for my purpose. It was about to go back in the box when
I noticed the date on the PCB (‘pat pending 1984’) and that it was in such good
condition. This bought back memories of a review of a kit car alarm and couple
of articles that I wrote on car security for a motoring magazine that I was
involved with in the early 80s. It clearly had been installed at some time and
fitted with industrial strength metal brackets but it was far too clean to have
been in the engine compartment and I suspect it was mounted in the boot. Thanks
to the well-labelled PCB I was about to figure out what the five wires emerging
from the case were for. It powered up and made a suitably deafening noise, when
hooked up to my bench power supply. I was also able to test the voltage sensing
function, which operated very effectively when the supply dropped from 13.5 to
13.4 volts. What Happened To It? Linwood in Birmingham was the home of Linwood
Electronic and for a short while, from the mid 70s to the mid 90s, or
thereabouts, they produced a range of car alarms and accessories, like battery
chargers, wheel clamps and so on. According to records at companies house they
were trading for over 20 years but when the company was formed and dissolved
wasn’t shown. They seem to have disappeared without trace, or at least left any
sort of footprint on the web, aside from an occasional product turning up on
ebay. Whilst most cars are now sold with some sort of
factory-fitted security system as standard, the emphasis has shifted from noisy
alarms to ways of preventing would-be thieves gaining access in the first
place, and immobilising the vehicle if it is compromised. This has involved all
sorts of digital trickery, from basic stuff like remote control and
microchipped key fobs to the currently trendy (but seemingly hackable) keyless
systems, fingerprint recognition, remote monitoring, GPS tracking and probably
coming soon to a car near you (or maybe here already…) voice recognition,
retinal scanning and microchip implants for the owner’s body. It’s ironic that
the current spate of thefts of cars with keyless systems has prompted experts
to advise owners of vulnerable cars to buy a steering wheel lock… I am not aware of car alarms having any sort of
following in the vintage tech collector community, and why would they?
Nevertheless it is a mildly interesting subject but I’ll not waste time putting
a value on this and other alarms from the same era. The 50 pence I paid for
this one (and that faulty mains adaptor) was probably too much, and it
certainly has no practical use. I won’t even suggest that you seek out bargains
as a potential investment -- that’s not
going to happen. It is possible that alarms from a much earlier time – and I’m
only guessing that they exist – might be of interest to vintage and veteran car
enthusiasts. But dull as they are I would hate to think that the brief history
of the aftermarket car alarm, and the Linwood Simple Siren goes completely
unrecorded. DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1984 Original Price: £20? Value Today: 50 pence (0518) Features: voltage sensing
trigger, internal siren, variable entry delay, auxillary trigger/sensor Power req.
12 volts DC (car
battery) Dimensions:
162 x 113 x 63mm Weight:
450g Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 7 Cosmos Melody Organ, 1979
The verifiable facts include that it very small, just 85 x 62 x 22mm or not much larger than a (largish) box of matches. It has a single-octave keyboard with a full set of sharp and flat keys and this can be switched to a second higher octave by pressing the small blue key on the left hand side of the top panel. Possibly the most interesting feature is the 56 note memory. This is enough to rattle out and replay most ditties, though sadly its titchy memory only extends to repeating notes, not their length or intervals, so recognising them from the recording is a bit hit and miss. You can jazz up your tunes as you play, though, with the yellow button, which adds a weak tremolo effect, and when you get bored with that there are eight programmed melodies, which it plays at random, including such diverse works as ‘Swanee River’ and Beethoven's 'Für Elise'.
There’s little to say about the innards. It
comprises just two small PCBs, one for the rubber-contact keyboard, mode and
on/off switches and the other for the chip and the rest of the components.
Musical notes escape from a 20mm piezo sounder and it is powered by a 9-volt
PP3 type battery, housed in a compartment on the rear of the case. If you
forget to switch it off it reminds you with a beeping alarm sound after a
couple of minutes of inactivity.
What Happened To It? Whilst a moulding on the battery compartment of
this one clearly states that it was manufactured in Japan, the very few
references to its Cosmos twin implies that it is was made Portugal, by Luso
Toys. Photos of the Cosmos variant clearly show the keyboard and internals as
one hundred percent identical to this one but a photo of the Cosmos back panel
bears a Made in Portugal stamp. There are two possibilities for this apparent
discrepancy. One, they were both made in Japan but the Luso Toys version was
supplied with a custom back panel to imply it was made locally. Two, the Cosmos
variant really was made in Portugal by Luso, but under licence from its
Japanese manufacturer. Personally I favour the first explanation. Country of
origin labelling laws were a lot more relaxed back then and as far as I am
aware Portugal in the 70s had no track record of manufacturing electronic
devices (though it might well have had the capability to make the plastic case)
but as always, if anyone knows different I am happy to set the record straight. It’s a great little gadget and there’s no doubt
that in its heyday it would have been a real crowd pleaser, in the school
playground or even down the pub (it didn’t take much to amuse us back then…).
For such a small device it packs in a lot of features and if it had been even a
little more tuneful it might even have found its way onto a novelty pop record,
following in the footsteps of the Casio VL-Tone, Stylophone and even the Texas
Speak and Spell. Sadly it has almost vanished into obscurity and the fact that
there are so few of them around points to it not being in production for very
long, or widely distributed, outside of Japan and Portugal. Electronic organs,
even really small and unusually well appointed ones like this have yet to
become collectibles but its charm, and rarity – I have yet to see another one
in the wild or on ebay -- could change all that. I’m being quite optimistic
about its value, £10, say, for a clean unboxed example like this and two or
three times as much for a mint one in its original packing. And if anyone can
point to it ever having been featured on a record or appeared in any TVs or
movies, get your chequebooks out and form an orderly queue. DUSTY DATAFirst Seen: 1997 Orginal Price: £5? Value Today: £10.00 (0518) Features: Full-range
single-octave keyboard, second octave switch, 56 note memory, 8 pre-programmed
melodies, tremolo button, built-in piezo sounder, inactivity/battery-saver
alarm Power req.
1 x 9-volt PP3 battery Dimensions:
85 x 62 x 22mm Weight: 52g Made (assembled) in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest)
8 Science Fair 200 in One Electronic Project
Lab, 1987
It is true that kids learn how to swipe screens
in their cots and perform the limited range of actions allowed by the software
on their devices, often with amazing dexterity. In later years some may even
acquire a basic understanding of the languages and codes that determine what
appears on their screens, but this is far removed from the nuts and bolts of
electronic circuitry, where the really clever and important stuff happens.
The really great thing, though, is being able
to tear a circuit down in few seconds and start another one straight away. Even
if you’re not electronically minded or even completely disinterested, you can’t
help absorb at least something of what’s going on. In decades past humble kits
like this often paved the way to electronics as a hobby, a path into higher
education or even a well-paid career. The bottom line is that a basic knowledge
of electronics and the skills acquired by making things, has always been an
invaluable preparation for life in an age where we are so dependant on
technology, and all too often flummoxed, when things go wrong.
What Happened To It? Science Fair was one of Radio Shack’s house
brands. It was better known in the UK as Tandy from 1973 their busy stores were
a familiar feature in many high streets. Sadly the chain lost direction; from
the mid 90s Tandy struggled to keep up with the rapid changes in technology and
the market and the last shops closed in 2001. The 2000 in One was one of a dozen or more
Electronic Project Kits sold by the company over the years. In the US Radio
Shack introduced the first Science Fair Project Lab kits in 1969. Tandy took a
while to catch up and in 1974 they featured a handful self assembly kits under
the Science Fair name but they were for single devices, like radios,
amplifiers, electronic organs and so on. Project Kits didn’t make an appearance
until 1980 with the first one featuring 150 circuits. The following year the
first version of the 200 In One kit was introduced. This was later revamped and
became the one you see here, with the addition of digital logic microchips,
silicon transistors and the more up to date front panel presentation. Electronic project kits, like chemistry sets,
never completely disappeared but little by little they became bland and
uninteresting. They fell victim to health and safety – even this one has a
minimum age recommendation of 10 and stern warnings about sharp pointy bits.
Where’s the fun in that? Over the years changes in the school curriculum placed
less emphasis on learning about electricity and electronics, and, of course
there were the more alluring attractions in the pipeline with shops full of
video games, computers and bucket-loads of ready-made electronic devices. Toys and games, even educational ones have
always been collectible, but interest, and therefore value, tends to be dependent
on age – pre 1970 is a rough and ready breakpoint. Later items can also be
highly sought after but normally it is dependant on some sort of link or
association with a movie, TV program or personality. The 200 in One is a little
too young to get serious collector’s juices flowing, even so examples in good
condition, like this one, regularly sell on ebay for between £20 and £40, less
well looked after ones can be found at car boot sales for pennies to a few
pounds. They have to be a sound investment; there are enough of them around to
be able to make up complete ones from two or three basket cases. Inevitably, as
the supply of sensibly priced vintage toys and games dries up the price
borderlines will change so be warned; it will be the cost of stuff made in the
80s and 90s -- that you threw away, or passed up at your boot local boot sale
-- that will make your eyes water. DUSTY DATAFirst Seen: 1987 Original Price: £39.99 Value Today: £20 (0418) Features: 200 electronic projects
involving 20 resistors, 10 capacitors, 4 transistors, 3 diodes, 7 LEDS, 1 x
7-segment display, moving coil mete5, 2 x transformers, 2 x logic gate
microchips, relay, ferrite antenna, CDS photocell, variable capacitor, variable
resistor, selector switch, Morse key, speaker Power req. 6 x 1.5 volt AA cells Dimensions: 370 x 225 x 70mm Weight: 770g Made (assembled) in: China Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 6 Benkson 92 Transistor Baby Sitter, 1965
Semiconductors opened up a vast new world of
possibilities, however, the first commercially available transistors were
comparatively expensive so those engineers, designers and marketing folk came
up with all sorts of crafty wheezes to get the new technology into the shops and in front of a (then) largely sceptical public.
Take this Benkson 92 Baby Sitter for example. If you're a regular visitor to
dustygizmos it might look slightly familiar. That's because the plastic case
and simple two-transistor amplifier it uses, turns up in at least three quite
different guises. Take a look at the Homer KIT-505 Telephone Amplifier and this
Eagle TI 206 2 Station Intercom and spot the similarities.
It caught my eye whilst trawling ebay for unusual intercoms, as you do on cold wet winter evenings, when there's nothing on telly (maybe that's just me...). It looked like a dozen or more models using the same case design but for some reason the lack of buttons, odd-looking box and low price made me take a closer look.
It appeared to be in almost as-new
condition, with the original box, instruction leaflet and even a warranty card.
Normally that would be enough to get it noticed and attract a bid or two, but
the description made it clear that it wasn't an intercom and the cable was
missing. In the end I was the only bidder and it became mine for only £4.00.
The description was accurate; it even came with an unopened bag of cable clips
and it was obvious that it had been little used, if at all. Plugging in a cable
from another vintage intercom that I had to hand showed it to be in good
working order with audible, if not especially clear and loud sounds from the
Mother Station. What Happened To It? So far so ordinary, but as I suggested earlier there is a bit more to it than meets the eye. It really is ninety-five percent one of those common or garden 2-station Intercoms. The only missing parts are a couple of push buttons and a volume control, components that would have cost the manufacturers just a few pennies. The necessary cutouts are even moulded into the case (but hidden by the front panel labels). Presumably some bright spark decided that there was this huge gap in the market for a dedicated baby alarm. All they had to do was slap a cutesy picture of a baby on the box and desperate mums and dads would be snatching them off the shelves.
Unfortunately,
it appears that their market research failed to take into account that there
were already countless cheap 2-station intercoms in the shops, also being
touted as baby alarms. To make matters worse in the UK it was priced at least
pound or so more than those near identical intercoms. Considering that I have
never seen another Benkson 92, or anything like it, on ebay or the wider web,
either before or since, suggests that it probably didn't sell very well, if at
all. I seriously doubt this is the only one in existence, but there can't be
many of them around, and in this sort of condition, in which case my estimate
of its current value is way, way too low... DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1965 (Instructions) Original Price: £4 9s 6d (£2.47) Value Today: £5.00 (0118) Features: 2-transistor amplifier, rotary on/off switch, 2 x 55mm (2.25in) speakers, 66 metres connecting cable, 2.5mm
minijack connectors Power req. 1 x 9v PP3 battery Dimensions: 104 x 78 x 40mm Weight: 127/98g (master/sub) Made (assembled) in: 'Foreign' (probably Hong Kong) Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 8 Military Shell Headset 5965-99-100,
1970?
What Happened To
It? Based on date
stamps and sketchy and conflicting information on the web the in-service life
for this design could extend from the early 1940s to the mid 70s. For what it is worth my guess is this
particular headset was probably made in the 1970s. The reasons for that are the
use of relatively modern plastic-insulated screened cables, which all look
original, the Lemo connector (it is based on a design patented in 1957), and
the condition of the rubber parts. Even with very careful storage rubber
naturally deteriorates but this one almost looks like it was made yesterday. I
cannot be certain of the manufacturer, either, though there is a good chance it
was made by Racal who have a very long history in military communications. It’s
not particularly rare, though examples in this sort of condition are few and
far between. The rubber parts of most of the ones I’ve seen on ebay seem to be
in an advanced state of decay. Although they probably cost the Ministry of
Defence a tidy sum back in the day they are never going to be worth much more
than the £5 to £20 they typically sell for ebay as converting them to be
anything other than a basic military headset would be a costly and probably
fruitless exercise. DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1943? Original Price: £?? (1117) Value Today: £15 Features: twin mono-wired low-impedance
headphones (40 ohm), low impedance magnetic microphone (40 ohm), leather
headband, wire neck band, boom mounted microphone, Lemo FGG 1B 3-pin connector Power req. n/a Dimensions: earcups: 95 x 70mm), mic: 50 x 30mm
(all approximate) Weight: 400g Made (assembled) in: UK Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 5 Beseler PM2 Color Analyzer, 1985
What Happened To
It? Now based in Pennsylvania the Charles Beseler Company dates back to 1869 and has been involved in the photography and optics business for the better part of 150 years. It moved into the amateur and professional markets in the early 1950s, producing a very successful range of darkroom enlargers, and became a leading supplier of darkroom equipment to schools and colleges. More recently it has become major player in shrink-wrapping and packaging.
As a matter of interest, although the
Beseler P2 was manufactured in the US a label on the back panel says it was
made under licence from a UK company called Melico Digital electronics and solid-state image sensors put paid to big old beasts like this. There is still a market for colour analysers but modern versions are smaller than the probe on the P2, much cheaper and a lot more sophisticated. I haven’t been able to find an exact price for this model, but the P2L, a basic variant of the P2, was selling for around £300 in the US in the mid 1980s, so I’m guessing this better specified model sold for between £400 and £500. Today it is practically worthless as a darkroom tool but it does have some value. No doubt there are a few photographic equipment collectors out there who would be pleased to give it house room, though it will be a few years before it achieves vintage status. There’s probably a few die-hards still using analogue kit like this, but for experimenters and hobbyists it’s the photomultiplier tube, high quality analogue meter and the rest of the components, which make it interesting, and well worth the £10 to £30 devices like this can sell for on ebay. DUSTY DATA (manual)
First seen: 1985? Original
Price: £450 Value Today: £20 (1117) Features: Photographic colour analyser,
photomultiplier probe with 4 switchable filters/channels, centre-zero moving
coil null/filtration/time scale, analogue value program ‘storage bank’,
Spot/Integration/Analyse program functions, Power
req. 240 volts AC Dimensions: 278 x 270 x 265 mm Weight: 6kg Made (assembled)
in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8 Receiving Set Infra Red Binoculars
No.1 Mk 1 Cased 6650-99-960-7616,1970
The British Army Receiving Set,
Infra-red Binocular, No1 Mk1, Cased 6650-99-960-7616,
otherwise known as the ‘Common-User Binoculars’ are not, as you might
suppose, vintage night vision goggles. In pitch-dark conditions they would of
very little use. In order to see anything through them the scene has to be lit
by infra-red (IR) light, which is (or should be) invisible to the naked eye.
Inside each of the binocular tubes there is a small device called an image
converter, which as the name suggests, converts infra-red light into visible
light. Although fully self-contained, relatively light and portable, these
helmet-worn goggles were not widely issued to ground troops. The problem was
that requirement for a powerful IR light, however, they did prove useful for
drivers of tanks, armoured vehicles, troop carriers and so on, which could be
fitted with IR floodlights, and in theory allow them to move around safely at
night.
What Happened To
It? Night vision
technology goes back a surprisingly long way and experimental systems were
being developed in the late 1920s. So-called ‘active’ or Generation 0
equipment, like the bins shown here, which rely on an external source of IR
information first appeared in the late 1930s. The Germany army is credited with
being the first to put this kind of equipment into service in 1939. British Army
Common Use Binoculars appear to have been in use for around 20 years, until
well into the 1980s, long after the development of ‘passive’ or Generation 1
night vision devices. These rely on image intensifier tubes to amplify ambient
light, from the moon and stars etc., by a factor of 1000x or more. These were
first deployed by the Americans during the Vietnam War. The changeover from
active to passive systems looks like a no-brainer. However, it seems to have
taken rather a long time, given the fact that they must have been a real
liability on the battlefield. Apart from anything else the necessary IR
illuminator would be clearly visible, and presumably an easy target, for an
enemy equipped with similar equipment. Even in good working condition I doubt that a pair of Common Use Binoculars have much practical use these days. They’re virtually unwearable without a suitable tin helmet and laying on a source of IR light could be a problem. Nevertheless, vintage military equipment can be very collectible and good working examples of this model appear on ebay every so often, in some cases selling for several hundred pounds. This one was undoubtedly a lucky find and a real bargain. With a pair of working tubes and some clean up work on the case, it might well achieve a three-figure sum. The only problem is that replacing the tubes at current market prices would virtually wipe out any profit. If you are after one in working order be prepared to pay handsomely for the privilege, or be patient, seek a fixer-upper and factor in the cost of replacement converter tubes. DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1968? Original
Price: £? Value Today: £30 (1017) Features: IR sensitive night vision binoculars,
fixed focus x1 magnification, 2 x CV6099 image converter tubes, 1.3kV power
supply. Power req. 1 x 1.5 volt C cell Dimensions: 450 x 140 x 130mm Weight: 1.4kg Made (assembled)
in: UK Hen's Teeth (10
rarest): 8 C-Scope ProMet II Metal Detector, 1986
Although this C-Scope ProMet II is more than 30 years old, it is the sort of metal detector that can help limit the number of bottle caps, rusty nails, bits of tin foil and so on you’ll dig up and, with practice, help tell the difference between a gold ring and an aluminium ring-pull. It’s a ‘discriminator’ several steps up from basic detectors and for good measure it can also compensate for differing ground conditions. This can have a big effect on a detector’s sensitivity and performance. For example, a piece of metal buried in a heavy clay soil can give an entirely different reading, or no reading at all, when the same object is at the same depth on a sandy, saltwater-soaked beach.
Once the telescopic stem for the search head has been extended and tightened the first job is to set the large Ground Exclude switch on the main unit. This has broad settings for Beach (dry sandy or saltwater) or Inland (normal or mineralised). The tricky part concerns balancing the settings on the three smaller knobs. They all interact with one another and getting it just right is as much an art as a science. From left to right they are Ground Exclude fine tune, Tuning and Sensitivity.
The controls on the meter stalk are a little easier to deal with; they’re concerned with automatic adjustment of Ground Exclude and Discrimination and switching the audio between a straightforward tone, and a variable tone that rises and falls in pitch as the search head passes over a metal object. With practice this can also help determine an object’s size, depth and even what it is made of. The meter gives just a relative indication of signal strength. In other words it rises and falls with the tone from the speaker; it looks quite important but in practice it is of limited use. After a while you tend to ignore it and concentrate more on the sound, which can also be piped through a set of headphones – there’s a standard Jack socket on the front of the main unit. Power is supplied by two battery boxes, housed in a compartment accessible from the underside. They’re filled with 12 AA cells, which sounds a lot but they last a good long time and the weight, which is towards the rear of the main unit, helps with the balance.
It turned out to be in good working order and just needed a very
thorough clean up. It had definitely seen a lot of service in muddy fields,
some of them freshly fertilised, judging by the smell… With a full set of
batteries on board it let out a loud howl, which just wouldn’t go away until I
managed to track down a copy of the instructions on the C-Scope website. With
its help I managed to sort out the controls and kill the noise, which only
returns when the search head passes over some metal. Five minutes later, on a
test run in my back garden I located the sunken piece of pipe for a long
forgotten rotary clothes dryer, a Russian military coat or hat badge – I have no
idea where that came from – two rusty bottle caps for Irn Bru (definitely not
mine…), and some fragments of cast metal that I suspect is WW II bomb shrapnel.
These items produced a very clear response but in the first half hour there
were dozens of other less well-defined hits. With time, and a lot of holes in
the lawn, I reckon that I could learn to determine if they are worth digging
up. All that remains now is to give it a proper field test, as it were.
What Happened To It? C-Scope, based in Ashford in Kent, has been in
the metal detector business for more than 40 years and in addition to
manufacturing an extensive range of hobbyist products, like the ProMet II - all
designed and built in the UK -- they also make specialist instruments for
tracing utility pipework and cables, and hand-held 'friskers' for security
applications. As far as I am aware metal detector collectors
are few and far between, though there is a healthy market in vintage military
instruments, such as WWII mine detectors. The earliest consumer models began to
appear in the early 1960s. This was largely thanks to the development of the
transistor, which made simple metal detectors light and affordable. Those very
early examples stand a fairly good chance of eventually becoming collectibles
but the value of later models, like this one, lie in them still being useable.
ProMet Ils turn up on ebay from time to time and they can fetch anywhere
between £30 and £80, depending on condition, so this one was a really good buy.
Had there been a fault in the custom-made search head or the electronics it
might have been a very different story. A fair number of the parts are no
longer made and could be difficult to source, so unless you can see one
working, or it's ridiculously cheap, buying one on spec could be a bit of a
gamble; being an optimist really does go with the territory... DUSTY DATA (Manual)First seen: 1985-ish Original Price: £50.00? Value Today: £30.00 (0717) Features: Programmed/Manual Ground Exclude (Inland/Beach - saltwater/mineralised) Audio or Meter Discrimination, variable sensitivity, manual/auto tuning, waterproof search head, 3-section telescopic stem, built-in speaker, headphone (std Jack) & charge sockets (3.5mm Jack) Power req. 12 x 1.5 volt AA cells Dimensions: Main unit: 450 x 120 x 250mm, Search Head:
205 x 30, Telescopic Stem: 280mm
(collapsed), 750mm (fully extended) Weight: 2.9kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 GEC C11B2 Electricity Meter, 1983
At first glance electricity meters like this one appear to be relatively uninteresting. To be brutally honest they don’t get much more exciting on the second and third glances… In part that’s because they are such familiar objects, though older electromechanical models like this one are disappearing fast. They also tend spend their lives in cupboards and out of sight. Even when you do see or think about them, it’s only briefly, and usually with a degree of annoyance when you recall your last electricity bill. Whilst it is true that, on the whole, electricity meters are only marginally more fascinating than drying paint, you might be surprised at watts going on inside (old electrician joke…) and answer the age old question about how the disc spins?
As an aside it’s worth mentioning that some old style meters, like the C112B, can be persuaded to run slower than they should or even backwards, making it appear that the householder is actually generating electricity and the supply company should be paying them! This really does happen. In the early days of solar power the outflow of electricity from the panels back into the grid would cause the meter to go slow or in reverse. It was also found that some types of electronic devices with exotic power supplies could also unwittingly affect the operation of old meters. However, by far the biggest cause of a slow down or reverse rotation was illicit fiddling by the user. This included physically modifying the meter or its connections, placing powerful magnets close to the meter and so-called ‘black boxes’ connected in line with the mains supply. These use electronic circuits to meddle with the phasing of the supply. Needless to say all such techniques are illegal and well known to supply companies and meter manufacturers who, by the mid 1980s were fitting anti-reverse mechanisms and meter readers were trained to be on the lookout for tampering. Nowadays computerised billing flags up suspicious activity and in some cases the evidence is tragically obvious, like the tamperer’s dead body, or an unexplained electrical fire. Times have changed and modern electronic meters are now immune to most common forms of tinkering and interference, but that doesn't stop people trying... The technology used in electromechanical electricity meters dates back more than 100 years and along the way there have been many improvements, culminating in the C112. It was introduced in the mid 1970s, and it -- and later variants -- was widely reckoned to be one of the best designs ever. It’s not difficult to see why it’s been so popular (with supply companies and electricians at any rate). It is designed to work safely and reliably 24/7, for decades if necessary, and the fact that millions of them were made, and by the time they were replaced or retired most of them were still working, says everything you need to know about how well they were made. To be fair there’s not a lot to go wrong but you only have to look at the solid construction and the materials used to appreciate the quality. There are a few adjustments inside the unit, mostly to do with initial calibration, but once it has been installed it would be expected to work continuously with any further attention almost indefinitely or until it is replaced. The transparent case cover is made of a super-tough plastic and fitted with a tamper-evident wire seal. The rear part of the case is made of an equally strong thermo-setting plastic; it provides both insulation and a fair amount of protection against physical abuse from irate consumers. And so to this meter’s back-story. It was kindly donated to dustygizmos by my elder brother Pete, who lives mostly in South Africa. It was left behind following a meter upgrade in his home and since the engineers left it behind, it was destined for the skip. Then he thought of me and ask if I wanted it. I accepted the offer, as I had never opened one up and was mildly curious about what was going on inside. He bought it with him on his most recent annual summer visit to the UK and I still cannot work out how it got here. This is a large, heavy, unusual, and I would guess, very suspicious-looking deviceyet it managed to pass unhindered through Customs inspections at some of the world’s most notoriously twitchy airports. Maybe old electricity meters are a common sight on baggage X-Ray machine monitors, or perhaps the operatives simply weren’t paying attention? In my experience Customs inspectors have a sixth sense for detecting and confiscating perfectly innocent bottles of water, tiny screwdrivers (for tightening spectacle screws) and small Swiss Army Knives in my luggage… What Happened To It? The General Electric Company or GEC was founded in London 1866 by two German-Jewish immigrants Gustav Binswagner and his friend Hugo Hurst. They started out as electrical component suppliers and rapidly moved into manufacturing, opening a small factory in Salford, making switches, electric bells and telephones. Rapid expansion followed and by the beginning of the First World War it had become an important player in the fast growing electrical industry, as well as making numerous products for the military. It was at or around this time that several overseas divisions were set up, including the one in South Africa, where the C11B2 featured here was made. GEC continued to go from strength to strength and throughout the Second World War and the years that followed it opened multiple factories and made huge investments in large scale engineering, nuclear power, defence equipment and acquiring other companies. The company’s fortunes peaked in the mid 1980s triggering a series of mergers and acquisitions. By the late 1990s things started to go downhill. The company drifted into debt and after a long drawn out series of increasingly complicated mergers, sales and joint ventures; in 2006 what remained of the once mighty multi-national was voluntarily liquidated. I am in no doubt that there are some serious collectors of vintage electricity meters out there, and I’m equally certain they pay handsomely for pre WW II models. The trouble with later types, like the C11B2, and others made after ther sixties, is that there are so many of them, and not just in this country. Millions of them must have been made and a fair number of the ones retired from service have been recycled. You can buy fully refurbished ones online for as little as £10, and that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable.
DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1975 Original Price: £? Value Today: £5.00 (0617) Features: Single phase kWh
meter, dual coil operation, 6-digit mechanical counter/register, magnetic eddy
current brake, Power req. AC mains line powered Dimensions: 175 x 136 x 112mm Weight: 1.8kg Made (assembled) in: South Africa Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 4 S.G. Brown Type F Stick Earphone, 1925
So why is there only one of
them, and what’s the stick all about? Quite simply it was designed for ladies,
and the partially deaf. The idea was that ladies could listen to a radio
without the inconvenience and inelegance of donning headphones, and avoid
mussing up their carefully coiffured hair. Stick earphones like this one were
also installed in churches, theatres and so on for the benefit of those with
hearing difficulties, or seated in the cheap seats. It’s difficult to say which
of those applications this one was intended for but the presence of a rotary
volume control at the base of the stick suggests that may have been more of a
luxury product, for personal use, rather than something used by common folk in
public buildings. One thing is certain,
though, this one wouldn’t have been used with a crystal radio. The impedance
(its internal resistance) is simply too low. Type F earphones were made in a
range of impedances, this one measures around 50 ohms, and is designed for use
with valve amplifiers, whereas the impedance of crystal radio headphones is
much higher, typically between 1000 and 2000 ohms, and since the signal is so
weak there would be no need for a volume control.
This earphone came from a car
boot sale in mid Sussex and at first I thought it was a microphone. So did the
stallholder who confidently dated it as an early sixties model and claimed to
have tested it, which I found somewhat doubtful. Since he was only asking £5.00
for it, it looked like a worthwhile a punt and he accepted my offer of £3.00
owing to a very small crack in the neck of the stick. This was easily repaired
and now you would be hard pressed to spot it without a magnifying glass.
Following a thorough clean up it’s as close to mint as its possible to get on
something that getting on for a hundred years old. The stallholder was right
about its condition, though, and it works really well.
What Happened To It? Sidney George Brown set up
the company bearing his name in 1903. He was an engineer by trade and started
out making parts and accessories for early radios, including headphones. The
company diversified into scientific instruments and most notably a gyroscopic
compass, which gained the company lucrative military contracts. Eventually
relations between the S.G. Brown and the Ministry of Defence soured and in the
years following the Second World War divisions were sold off and what remained
was bought and sold a number of times until the brand eventually disappeared
after being acquired by the military contractor Vosper Thorneycroft. Needless to say the market
for stick earphones was quite limited, and short-lived. My guess is it fizzled out by the 1940s,
though it’s hard to be sure as this is not a widely researched subject.
Ironically a quick search on ebay and Amazon brings up countless modern earphones
designed for 'ladies', though they tend to have more to do with girly colours and cute animal shapes, rather than protecting hairdos… What you will often find on
ebay, though is one or two vintage stick earphones like this one and at a very
rough guess there were at least three or four manufacturers. Prices are
disappointingly low and rarely top more than £20, and that’s for ones in good
condition. The lack of information on the web suggests stick headphones are an
unexplored backwater and therefore ripe for collectors. I would also bet a
pound to a penny that one of these would get you a spot on TV if you showed up
with one at the Antiques Roadshow, but it won’t make your fortune. As always,
though, don’t let that put you off snagging one if the price is right. DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1925 Original Price: £? Value Today: £15.00
(0617) Features: Low
impedance magnetic earphone with Stalloy (or Ferosil) diaphragm, variable
volume, cloth covered cable, 2-pin connector socket. Power req. n/a Dimensions: 325
x 62 x 28mm Weight: 200g Made (assembled) in: Watford,
England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest) 8 Philips SBC RU 098 Football Zapper, 1998
Little or no new technology
was involved in this hybrid design. The remote part is very similar to at least
one other model in the Philips range at the time. There really isn’t much to
say about bottle openers, except this one is a thick metal plate, sandwiched
between the two case halves of the remote. This is imparts strength and
leverage. Simply tacking a bottle opener onto the end of a remote box would
quickly come to grief.
Philips gave this one to me
at the press launch for their World Cup promotional campaign. It wasn’t a
tricked up PR freebie but a proper retail product and I seem to recall that it
was priced at £30 or thereabouts. I am happy to be corrected but the only thing
I can remember is thinking was that it was way too expensive for a fancy bottle
opener; World Cup or not… I came across it recently, still in its original
packaging, in a box in my loft where it has remained undisturbed for almost two
decades, complete with its original batteries. I neither know nor care if it
works; it probably does but the TVs it was designed to control have long since
disappeared so it is at least 50 percent useless, though the bottle opener is
probably still okay… What Happened To It? Off the top of my head I
cannot recall any other novelty or combo remote controls as crazy as this one.
It might even be unique which, by rights, should make it quite valuable.
Philips probably shifted a few of them but I have never seen another, or can
find any record one selling on ebay. Back in the real world I doubt that any
sane person or even football fan would pay more than a couple of pounds for it.
But its day might come. I’ll be putting it back into secure storage for the
benefit of future generations who will either marvel at its ingenuity and
originality, or have a good laugh…. DUSTY DATAFirst seen: 1998 Original Price: £30 Value Today: £2
(0117) Features: Universal infrared TV remote control, 4 functions: power,
mute volume & channel up/down, and integral bottle opener Power req. 2 x 1.5v AAA cells Dimensions: 170 x 58 x 40mm Weight: 150g Made (assembled) in: Singapore Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Avid Pneumatic Airline IFE Headphones, 1970
Most airlines charged economy and coach passengers a fairly hefty rental fee, £2 - £5 as I recall, for the privilege of using them. Up the front of the plane, in business and first class, they were usually given out free. At the end of the flight they would be collected, cleaned and then reused. It must have been quite profitable for the airlines, though when asked why they cost so much the usual response was that the charge was to cover cleaning and/or royalties for showing in-flight movies. It’s hard to see how they couldn’t have made money. A single rental charge would have more than covered the cost of manufacture, and they were probably re-used scores, if not hundreds of times. What’s more the movies airlines showed in the early days – and there was usually only one, or two on a long-haul flight -- were often well past their view by date...
It all sounds quaintly prehistoric nowadays but
apparently this system was still in use by at least one major airline (Delta)
up until 2003, but that’s not the end of the story. Pneumatic headsets continue
to be used to this day in specialist applications and we will look at a couple
of them later on.
What Happened To It? The type of pneumatic headphones produced by Avid for
commercial airlines lasted until well into the nineteen eighties but as aircraft were replaced or refurbished, IFE systems were
updated and headphone jacks started appearing on seat armrests. The change was
forced upon them by the runaway success of Walkman type personal stereos, which
allowed passengers to carry their own entertainment systems with them. Airlines
were left with no choice but up their game with more attractive multi-channel
IFE offerings, using proper stereo headphones. This didn’t mean they willingly
gave up on charging though, and to discourage passengers from using their own
headphones, seats were fitted with a variety of proprietary or unusually
configured connectors. To be fair the very annoying twin mono 3.5mm jack
arrangement had some justification. If there was a problem with the chair
module resulting in a loss of signal to one socket, maintenance could be
deferred and the seat could still be used. If an aggrieved passenger complained
cabin crew could usually persuade, or bribe the traveller with goodies from the
refreshment cart to put up with it, or do a swap with someone who didn’t want
to use the IFE. It didn’t take long for aircraft jack adaptors to become
available, though, so the airlines switched from renting to selling headsets
and since they were usually cheap and nasty items, they could still make a
decent profit. In the early days at least there were plenty of takers as not everyone remembered to pack a
pair of head or earphones for every member of the family in their carry-on.
Now, back to those ongoing uses for pneumatic
headphones, and they include hospital MRI scans.
Scanners are noisy, intimidating beasts and one way to get patients to relax
and stay still is to get them to listen to music. However, metal interferes
with the scanner and conventional headphones are banned, but there’s no problem
with an all-plastic pneumatic headsets. A similar setup is also used to check
the hearing of newborn babies and infants. Pneumatic tubes and earpieces feed
sounds to the children’s ears and their responses are monitored using an
electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures brain activity. Precision-made
plastic parts ensure accuracy and because they are sterile and cheap to make
they can be disposed of after use. Over the years millions of pneumatic IFE headsets
must have been made but thanks to the rapid change to wired headphone sockets
the vast majority of them would have been removed from service and destroyed.
Some have survived, though, and there’s usually one or two on ebay at any one
time. Prices are surprisingly high for such cheap (and useless) plastic items but that’s
probably due to a thriving market in airline ephemera, rather than rarity or interest
from collectors of vintage technology. The highest prices -- £15 - £20 -- are paid for
unused headsets still in their sealed plastic bags, more so if they belong to
large and defunct or small and obscure airline. Less reputable ones like these
still have some value, though and because they are in good condition I have
valued them at £10.00. I will probably hang on to them though, just in case the
airlines ever bring them back. And if they start charging again I’ll be ready,
provided they don’t change the design of the sockets... DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1963 Original Price £? Value Today £10
(1216) Features Two channel (stereo) operation, soft rubber earpieces,
push-fit connector Power req. n/a Dimensions: Head frame 180 x 120 x 8mm, tube dia. 6mm, length 1 metre Weight: 300g Made (assembled) in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Garmin GPS III Pilot Aviation GPS
Receiver, 1997
In spite of its size the display
shows an astonishing amount of information. One button steps through a sequence
of six ‘pages' and what follows is just a tiny fraction of the data it can be
configured to show. Page one covers GPS acquisition, and you need a good lock
on at least three satellites for so-called ‘3D’ navigation, which means showing
your position in terms of speed, direction and the height above ground at your
destination. Obviously knowing how high you are is quite important when flying,
but once you've reached a safe height you just need to know you how high you, and
all of the other aircraft in your vicinity, are above the common reference of sea level (so-called QNH).
Lower down, when landing or taking off, your height above sea level becomes
largely irrelevant and your main concern is your height above the hard,
unforgiving ground (QFE), so you can avoid bumping into things… Page two on the display is devoted
to positional information. This shows what direction you are going, where you
are, how fast you are going and other useful titbits like trip timers (for
managing fuel use etc), and sunrise and sunset times, (handy to know if you are
not qualified to fly at night). This is followed by the moving map display and
it shows only the things that you can see on the ground, and the even more
important things you can’t see, like the invisible borders surrounding
airfields, aircraft traffic lanes, restricted areas, danger zones and so on. Next comes the
HSI (Horizontal situation indicator) page that shows a large compass display
with a course deviation bar. The compass shows the direction you need to steer
to stay on course; a bar in the middle shows how far you are off track, so you
try to keep it centred. There are also readouts for speed, distance and time to
waypoint or destination. Page 5 is the only one that looks vaguely like a car
GPS and this shows a sort of imaginary aerial highway that you have to follow.
Lastly there’s the route page, which shows the ident codes of the airfields or
waypoints you have selected and want to get to, the course you need to fly and
the distance to each one. One look at the 100 plus page
instruction book is enough to tell you that it’s a formidable little gadget and
not especially easy to use, compared with an in-car GPS. On the other hand once
you have started flight training you quickly become familiar with its most
important features and it starts to make sense. Setting it to guide you to
an airfield using its ident code, for example, is no more difficult than programming an
in-car GPS with a postcode but it is all the other things that it does, besides basic
point-to-point navigation, that’s important, and what separates it from terrestrial
GPS. I bought this one in the late 90s,
a few years after I got my pilot’s licence and it cost a small fortune, but
it was worth every penny and got me out of trouble several times. It was quite a
controversial purchase though, and at the time older pilots viewed the new
fangled technology with some distrust. However, it
quickly proved itself and within a few years GPS had become an almost standard
fitment in light aircraft, though more traditional navigation methods
definitely haven’t been abandoned and their use continues to be taught for reasons of safety
and reliability. What Happened To It? There are no prizes for working
out where the name Garmin came from, once you know that the company was founded in
Taiwan in January 1990, by two electrical engineers called Gary Burrell and Dr.
Min Kao. Needless to say Garmin, one of the pioneers of GPS technology, are
still going strong and heavily involved in all fields of satellite navigation. This particular GPS III Pilot had a
lot of use in the late 90s and early noughties and it is still in great condition and full working order thanks to the very
high quality of the materials and the standard of construction – after all, lives may
depend upon it. At a pinch it could
probably still be used, though the tiny screen makes it very hard
going, compared with modern units, which have improved in leaps and bounds
in terms of displays, accuracy and ease of use. However, the stored maps and database
haven’t been updated for several years, if indeed they are still available for this device, so
sadly its flying days are now over. Vintage GPS units have yet to
achieve collectable status, though there’s little doubt that some of the very
first models, sold in the early 90s, are very rare indeed and could eventually
have some historic importance to collectors of milestone technologies. It seems
that quite a few GPS III Pilot’s were made between 1997 and the early noughties
and most of them would have been very well looked after, so they are no
strangers to ebay, especially in the US. Current prices for obsolete aviation
GPS equipment bears little relationship to the original cost, or follows any
particular pattern, which means you can pick up a working GPS III Pilot, for
example, for anything between £25 and £200. Of course it is entirely possible
that old GPS units could turn out to be a worthwhile investment but it seems
unlikely you’ll live long enough to reap the benefits… DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1997 Original Price £400 Value Today £40 (1116)
Features Single channel differential ready Phase Trac receiver, 58
x 36mm monochrome backlit LCD display with screen rotation and zoom functions,
positional accuracy 1 – 5 metres, acquisition times: cold start – 45 seconds;
warm start - 15 seconds; auto locate – 5 minutes, update rate 1 second
continuous, BNC antenna socket, RS-232 PC data interface Power req. 4 x 1.5v AA cells & 10-32VDC (external adaptor) Dimensions: 124 x 42 x 60mm Weight: 168g Made (assembled) in: Taiwan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 La Pavoni Professional Lever Coffee Machine, 1985
It was only on the screen for a few moments, at the beginning, but it
was memorable for this classic, wry, one-liner from Bond’s MI6 boss ‘M’: ‘Is that
all it does?’
The apparently simple act of
preparing a cup of coffee has spawned more gadgets and contraptions than almost
any other culinary task. I’ve probably owned or tried most of them at one time or
another, but this one is definitely a keeper. Nowadays it’s possible to get a
half decent espresso or cup of coffee from a wide range of appliances but in
almost all cases you are limited to a narrow range of options proscribed by the
machine’s microchips, control software and flimsy mechanical components. And
they’re not helped by the lack of variety in pre-packed capsules and podules
and the often characterless ground coffees available in UK shops. La Pavoni lever machines go right
back to basics though, they’re purely manual contrivances, no pumps or presets
and the resulting cups of coffee can be as good (or as bad) as you care to make
them. Some coffee nerds even claim that it’s capable of the perfect espresso,
the fabled ‘God Shot’, but the bottom line is that with care, patience, and a
lot of trial and error it can make a damn fine tasting brew. The fact that this
model has been in production, virtually unchanged, since the early 1960s
suggests that the designers got it more or less right first time.
It all sounds quite
straightforward but the quality of the shot depends on a bewildering number of
variables that real coffee nuts spend ages debating, and even longer trying to
perfect. These include the speed at which the lever is raised, how long you
wait before it is lowered, the pressure applied to the lever, how finely the
coffee is ground, the tamp (how hard the portion of ground coffee is pressed
into the portafilter), the nature of the water, local height above sea level
(yes, really, and we’ll deal with that in a moment) and most importantly, the
type or blend of coffee. The height above seal level where
the machine is used is important because if it is significantly higher or lower
than Milan, where the machine was built, and the pressurestat switch set, it
may need to be adjusted to compensate… Don’t mock, small details like that can become a
serious issue for La Pavoni’s more obsessive users.
I found this La Pavoni Pro at a
Surrey car boot sale and even through the layers of mud and grime I could see
the chrome plating was sound and it was mostly intact, missing only a drip tray, so it warranted closer
inspection. At that point having only a passing knowledge of these machines I
had no idea what it was worth or even if it was salvageable, but since the
stallholder was only asking £12 for it (haggled down to £8.00), and being a
sucker for old coffee machines, I suspected that it could make an interesting
restoration project. The stallholder claimed it was working but this turned out
only to apply to the boiler’s heating element, everything that could wear out
or perish had. As found the only way it could make coffee would be to heat up
some water (very messily) for a lukewarm cup of instant. Fortunately the Italians didn’t
stint on materials; all of the metal components were in good order and the
general build quality on this 1985 vintage model is excellent. La Pavoni are
still in business so there’s a good supply of spare parts. The first job was to
remove years of accumulated dirt and lime scale; several bottles of strong
detergent and descaler later it was starting to look like its old self. The
main problem, though, was the many rubber washers and seals inside the Group
Head and pipe joints, which all leaked, gushing water and steam whenever the
machine was switched on. Rather than try and identify the
ones that failed, or were about to go, I purchased a complete rebuild kit,
and replacement drip tray costing £30. This forced me to strip the machine down to its bones and do the
job properly, thoroughly cleaning every component. It was well worth the effort
and after several run-throughs with clean water, to get rid of the last traces
of descaler and rubber lubricants, it was ready to go. The first few espressos
were very disappointing, though. It wasn’t until I tweaked the pressurestat
switch, which determines how hot the water gets, read through several of the
many websites packed with advice and techniques for La Pavoni owners, worked my
way through half a dozen blends of coffee and bought a new bean grinder that I
started to get the hang of it and make drinkable coffee. There’s still plenty
of room for improvement, but that’s a big part of the appeal and whilst I doubt
I’ll ever get close to a consistent God Shot, it’s fun trying. Of course there are downsides The
La Pavoni Pro is not the machine to have if you just want a quick cup of
coffee. It takes a good six to eight minutes for it to get up to temperature
and ten minutes plus for a good head of steam. It requires a fair amount of
pressure to push down the lever, and if the boiler runs low and you want more
coffee you have to depressurise the boiler through the steam wand, refill the
boiler and wait for it to heat up again. The steamer pipe is a bit too close to
the boiler for comfort and it’s quite fierce. It takes a while to get used to
it and until you do it sprays hot milk over an impressively wide area. If
you’re used to a conventional coffee machine you’ll find the portafilter latch
is back to front, as it were, and all that chrome and pipework takes a lot cleaning
to keep it looking nice and shiny. What Happened To It? The La Pavoni Piccola model
featured in Live and Let Die first appeared in 1961. Over the years there have
been many improvements but the way it works, and the outward appearance are
still clearly recognisable on current Europiccola models, which sell from
around £350 for a basic no-frills machine. The Professional model was
introduced in 1983, doubling the capacity of the boiler from 0.8 litres, or
around 8 espressos, to 1.6 litres, or 16 cups. Otherwise they are practically
identical, apart from the price, and today’s baseline Pro model will set you back
the thick end of £550. If money is no object you can easily spend half as much
again on machines with a brass finish, wooden handles and accessories. The eight quid my one cost was
clearly a bargain, even after spending another £30 on the rebuild kit. For the
record the washers and seals it uses are not that special and someone who knows
their way around the high-pressure rubberware market could probably cut the
cost of refurbishment by 50 percent or more. La Pavoni Piccola and Professional
machines appear regularly on ebay; they rarely sell for less than £150, though
£300 to £500 is more typical but on any used machine you would be well advised
to factor in the cost of a grouphead rebuild. Fortunately this is a relatively
straightforward DIY job requiring only basic tools. If you are lucky enough to
find a cheap vintage fixer-upper don’t be put off; all parts are still
available, though it pays to shop around as some items from authorised dealers
can be quite pricey. DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1961 Original Price £? Value Today £150.00
(1016) Features 1.6 litre capacity, 0.7 – 1.2 bar pressure, 1000 watt
heating element, pressure gauge, safety valve, steamer wand, water level sight
glass Power req. 230VAC 50/60Hz Dimensions: 300 x 200 x 340mm Weight: 6.2kg Made (assembled) in: Milan,
Italy Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Ianero Quartzcolour Polaris Spotlight, 1980
Theatrical and studio spotlights turn out to be a
good deal more complex than they appear from the outside. The moveable flaps or
‘barndoors’ on the front is the most noticeable, and familiar, feature and
their function is pretty obvious, to define the limits of the beam, which as
you can imagine can be quite handy for stage lighting. The big lens on the
front is a Fresnel type; it works just like a conventional convex lens but it
is flat, formed of a series of concentric prisms, which makes it easier to
manufacture, and lighter too, because less glass is needed.
I came across this lamp, one of a pair, at a car boot
sale in Kent, and having seen them previously at antique markets, often priced
at several hundred pounds, I almost didn’t bother asking. But I did,
more out of curiosity than hope, and was amazed when the stallholder said £60
each. It was still more than I was prepared to spend (or had about my person)
so when the stallholder said he was open to offers I tried my luck with a
cheeky £30 – about all that I had on me -- and was amazed when he accepted. He
added that I could have both for £50. I’m kicking myself now for not snapping them up,
though this would have entailed a trip to a cash machine and the nearest one
was 5 miles away; the wife was also pulling faces, and it was starting to
drizzle. I kid myself that they wouldn’t have fitted in my small car (they
would, I would have made them fit…) but onwards and upwards, and it was still
the bargain of the year. Judging by the sticky labels it had recently been
auctioned as part of a large lot of stage lamps. It was clear that it had been
in use for some years but the scuffs and scratches were mostly minor. At some
point the clamps on the stand had been painted over with white emulsion but
that came off easily and they, and the barndoor flaps, were restored to an
almost as-new condition with a quick rub down with some wire wool and coat of
matt black spray paint. The lens, lamp housing and stand just needed a thorough
clean. Once it was looking presentable and all moving parts lubricated, it was
time to see if it worked. A continuity test confirmed the bulb was probably okay
and the wiring was in good condition so power was applied and, nothing... The
fault turned out to be the heavy-duty toggle switch on the side, which had gone
open circuit. I could have replaced it but I decided to try my luck, take it
apart and see if it was fixable. It was, just an accumulation of dried out
grease and gunk on the contacts and ten minutes later it was back together and
working.
What Happened To It? Ianero in Italy are still in the business making
professional studio and TV lights, so too is Strand Lighting, though it is now
part of the Philips group. Nowadays both companies concentrate on sophisticated
computer controllable LED-based systems; old style power-hungry and inefficient
incandescent lamps like the Polaris have become virtually obsolete That is part of the reason why so many stage and
studio lights have been turning up at antique fairs over the past few years, as
they are replaced with more up to date equipment, though undoubtedly there have been quite a few theatre and
studio closures as well, contributing to the supply. There’s also a lot of
phoney stage lights doing the rounds but these tend to be flimsily made, very
unconvincing and quite easy to spot, pun intended. Large old-school models like this one are becoming
harder to find, though and as when they come on to the market in any sort of
quantity they tend to be snapped up by upcyclers and interior designers, who
generally sell them on at a very handsome profit. A lot of these lamps were
designed for use on overhead gantries and have been clumsily (and sometimes
dangerously) mated to unsuitable, lightweight camera, telescope and wooden
theodolite tripods, and I dread to think what state the modified electrics
might be in. A fair number of lights end up being stripped back to bare metal
and polished, which to me looks a bit naff, and they’re going to be a pain to
keep looking shiny. Unfortunately bargain finds are few and far between; I doubt that I will ever see another one like this for the price. However, if you fancy one it is worth persevering and there have been some quite decent looking fixer-uppers on ebay recently for well under £100. Antique fairs are another good source but if you’re on a tight budget be prepared to get your hands dirty with some restoration and TLC. Also, given a choice, I recommend models that are quite a lot smaller than this one, unless you have enormous rooms, or live in a converted TV studio. DUSTY DATAFirst seen
1980 Original Price £198 Value Today £150
(0616) Features 1kw Halogen lamp (CP40 bi-post quartz), 150mm Fresnel lens
(beam range 9 – 60 degrees), manual pan, tilt & beam focus/control, side
mounted power switch, colour/diffuser frame, four leaf 360 degrees rotating
Barndoors, inc. Arri Trojan tripod base stand Power req. 240VAC Dimensions: 550
x 320 x 290mm (ex stand & barndoors) Weight: 6kg
(ex stand) Made (assembled) in: Italy Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Weller X-8250A Soldering Gun, 1953
Soldering guns differs from regular stick or wand
type soldering irons in two very particular ways. Firstly they only heat up –
to around 200 degrees centigrade -- when you pull the trigger, and for that to
be useful it has to happen very quickly, typically in just 3 to 5 seconds.
Secondly, they tend to be a lot more powerful than conventional irons, with
heat outputs of 100 watts or more (this one is rated at 250 watts). Basically
this means that they can solder large things that would quickly cool the tips
of an ordinary iron, with wattages of between 15 and 25 watts. This has become
less of an issue in the past few decades; nowadays most electronic devices are
built using printed circuit boards populated with tiny heat sensitive
components; big brutes like this can do more harm than good in confined spaces,
but just occasionally there is a need to solder a thick cable or sizeable chunk
of metal and only a soldering gun like this, with some serious grunt, will do. Weller soldering guns, named after their inventor, Carl
E Weller, from Easton Pennsylvania, began working on the design in his basement
in the early 1940s and was granted a patent in 1946. A prototype of his first
production gun, the Speedy Model B, is considered important enough to be on
display at the Smithsonian Institute. Apart from the fact that the handle is
made of wood it looks remarkably similar to this one, made in around 1953, and
most of today’s models.
This Weller X-8250A was a recent find at a Surrey
cart boot sale and I wasn’t about to quibble over the 50 pence asking price.
The stallholder reckoned that it came from a house clearance and hadn’t been
used for a very long time, confirmed by the fact that it was still fitted with
an ancient round pin plug. It looked pretty grubby but the Bakelite case
appeared to be in very good condition and the tip looked as though it had been
little used. Mains powered devices are always a gamble at car boots, and
potentially dangerous, so before I connected it up it was given a complete
strip down, clean up and electrical check. The Bakelite case and tip holders
polished up really well, thanks to some Brasso and a lot of elbow grease. The
transformer, switch and cable all tested okay and with a new mains plug fitted
it was time to power it up. It worked perfectly, reaching working temperature
in just 2 or 3 seconds and since there were no smells, sparks or shocks it
should prove to be a perfectly useable and useful tool. What Happened To It? Weller brand Soldering guns, and a very wide range of
specialised tools and devices used in electronics manufacturing are still being
produced but the once family-owned company has been a part of the Apex Tool
Group since the 1970s. However, the design of the soldering guns has changed
comparatively little over the years; plastic has replaced Bakelite making the
cases more resilient and improvements in other areas have made them lighter and
more efficient but in almost every important respect they're little different from Carl Weller's original design.. The X-8250A was originally sold as part of a kit, housed in a tough metal case with accessories that included a reel of solder a small spanner and a set of interchangeable tips for soldering, cutting and melting. Vintage models have become quite collectible, especially in the US, and very early designs and prototypes can fetch quite impressive prices. Complete and well looked after outfits dating from the 50s or 60s regularly sell for between £30 and £50 on ebay US. Well-used 8200 series guns – like this one -- are quite common though, a fair number were sold in the in the UK and the going price for a clean one is around £25.00. I can’t pretend that collecting vintage soldering irons is ever going to become a popular pastime, or a good investment, but if you’re any sort of DIY dabbler or handyperson a Weller gun in good working order is always going to earn its keep and the day will come when it's the only tool for the job. DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1953 Original Price $14.95 Value Today £10
(0516) Features Trigger switch, 250 watts, 5-second heat up, twin
‘spotlights’, multi-purpose interchangeable tips Power req. 240VAC Dimensions: 270
x 165 x 55mm Weight: 1.5kg Made (assembled) in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Horstmann Pluslite Magnifying Task Lamp, 1955?
All I can remember is that it came from a junk shop
in Forest Hill, in South London, around 30 years ago, and I doubt very much
that I paid more than £5.00 for it. It was then as you see it now, and apart
from a wipe over for the camera; it remains in excellent condition with just a
few marks to the silver paintwork here and there. The lamp holder has been
rewired – the cable used to be a real trip hazard – and it’s probably on its
third or fourth bulb, currently a 5-watt LED type – and that’s about the extent
of the care and maintenance it has needed. There’s no reason to think that it
won’t still be working in 50 or even100 years time, there’s simply nothing to
go wrong. What Happened To It? Although this lamp is badged Horstmann the
manufacturer is usually referred to as Hadrill & Horstmann and the logo on
the magnifying glass cover features a double ‘H’. However, there is
surprisingly little on the web about the company and its history, apart from
the fact that it probably started at some time in the 1930s, and over the years
produced at least a dozen different styles and types of table, task and floor
standing lights. It seems that Hadrill & Horstmann ceased trading around 50
years ago and the name or business was bought up by the car parts manufacturer
Simms in 1956. They went on to develop a series of classy looking desk and task
lamps under the Simplus brand throughout the late 50s and 1960s but that’s
where the trail goes cold. It’s going to take a lot more research to fill in
the considerable gaps, so if anyone knows more (anything…) about the company,
please let me know. It may not be a completely dormant brand though. The
company name was recently re-registered at Companies House, key patents have
been acquired and a graphics design company commissioned to devise a new logo.
Could a revival of the iconic lamps be in the pipeline? Time will tell but at the moment original vintage Hadrill and Horstmann lamps are being offered for sale at some frankly astonishing prices. I came across one late 1940s model in what was very kindly described by a dealer in retro-chic furniture as in ‘distressed’ condition (i.e. an absolute wreck) going for over £1000. The few I have seen on ebay are pitched between £200 and £500, and there’s several listed in auction catalogues and on antique dealer’s websites for similar amounts. Even the later Simplus models can fetch a very pretty penny so my one may well be worth a few bob. It is not for sale and still in constant daily use, though at some point I might re-assign it to less arduous decorative duties now that I have my new Anglepoise magnifier lamp, which has a more powerful 5X lens, and is better suited to working on small fiddly things, due to my ageing eyeballs. DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1955? Original Price £30? Value Today £150
- £300 (0516) Features ‘Roller’ type weight counterbalanced (counterpoise) cantilever
construction, 105 x 70mm fold-away glass lens 2X magnification, multi-axis lamp
mount Power req. 220VAC Dimensions: 550/1020
x 380 x 160mm (folded/fully extended) Weight: 6.5kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Seafarer 5 Echo Sounder, 1981
The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 prompted a flurry
of research into marine safety. Inventors in both England and Germany came
up with similar solutions inspired by the way bats and dolphins use sound to
judge distances by a process known as echo location. The first patents for the
system we now call Sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging) were filed in 1913. At
first glance it appears to be a fairly straightforward process; sound travels
easily through water, at reasonably predictable speeds so all you have to do is
to contrive some way to measure how long it takes for a pulse of sound, sent
from the bottom of the vessel to bounce back from the seabed, and from that you can
work out the distance.
As you can see the Seafarer 5 is housed in a compact
console, which would normally be mounted in clear view of whoever is steering
the boat. There’s a minimum of controls, these include a two-position range
selector (Shallow 0 – 18metres/0-60 feet and Deep 0-108 metres/0 – 60 fathoms).
There’s a variable Gain control, which compensates for multiple echoes, caused
by variations in the seabed terrain, depth and so on, and a shallow depth
alarm, which sounds when the depth falls below a preset level. However, the most important part of the Seafarer 5,
and most other echo locators, is the depth display. Nowadays it’s usually a
digital or graphical LCD screen, showing the depth beneath the hull
numerically, in feet, metres or fathoms, or as a graphic or ‘chart’ type
display showing the seabed contours. In contrast this model features an
ingenious electomechanical dial, with a flashing LED indicating the depth
against circular calibrated scales.
The unit has two power options, it can either run –
for a limited time – on an internal 9 volt PP9 battery, which fits in a
compartment on the back of the case, or it can be connected to the boat’s power
supply and to accommodate wide variations it, this can be anywhere between 10.8
to 32 volts DC. The other critical component is the transducer. This
is a small waterproof module, which fits into a hole in the hull and connects
to the Seafarer 5 by a cable. Inside the transducer there is a piezo crystal
sounder/microphone that blasts out a 150kHz pulse (100 watts peak to peak),
and picks it up on its return journey from the seabed. Sadly this vital part
was missing on the one I have here. Operation is very simple, the Gain control doubles up
as the on/off switch, initially the LED flashes at the zero indication. The
knob is turned slowly until a second reading is shown, indicating the depth.. There’s provision for a second digital repeater display,
which would normally be mounted elsewhere on the vessel, in the cabin for
example. I landed this one at a local car boot sale. The
stallholder’s opening offer price of £10, told me all that I needed to know about its
probable condition. Originally it would have cost several hundred pounds and in
spite of its age, in good working order I could see it fetching £20 or so in a
marine equipment sale, maybe as a fitting for a 1980’s boat restoration
project. It didn’t take much persuasion to get him to drop the price to £2.50,
which confirmed my suspicion that it probably wasn’t going to be in tip-top
working condition... It wasn’t a surprise, therefore to discover that at
some point water had got past the case seals but luckily it appears to have
been of the fresh, rather than saltwater variety, so the visible damage wasn’t
too severe. The case and parts inside all cleaned up well but the worst problem
was a thin film of silt on the PCB and oxidisation on the spade contacts that
link the PCB to the power and battery connectors on the back panel. This was
easy enough to remove but the unit refused to power up. It is unlikely that the
lack of a transducer is responsible, so at some point, when time allows it is
going to require some serious troubleshooting. Surprisingly, though, what I
supposed to be vulnerable components, like the LED display mechanism, slip ring
contacts, and the motor escaped unscathed and they all worked when powered
independently. What Happened To It? According to several 1980s boat and yachting
magazines, rotating LED display, like the one used on the Seafarer 5 (and
earlier versions, that used neon bulbs) were a mixed blessing.
Whilst this type of display is large and very easy to read in all weathers and
lighting conditions, reliability can be an issue, but the main complaint was a tendency for them to produce
misleading ‘ghost’ indications, caused by multiple echoes. It’s difficult say
when they eventually fell out of favour but by the mid to late 1980s unambiguous
digital and chart type visual displays had become the norm. Seafarer Navigation International Ltd, the manufacturers,
also had a somewhat chequered history. It started out as a division of the
Brocks Group, a collection of companies based in the Poole area, involved in
diverse enterprises, ranging from marine electronics to sewing machines. The
Seafarer brand was created in 1980 and appeared to thrive for several years but
by the early 90s the company had been dissolved and Standard Communications
bought up what was left of it, and there the trail goes cold. During its brief existence it is possible that
Seafarer made several thousand echo sounders like this one but my guess is that
in the extreme conditions they were expected to work in, the failure rate would
have been quite high. The new generation of models with digital and graphic
displays put paid to mechanical displays by the early 90s, but Seafarer 5s and
the later 700 model do turn up on ebay, and every so the seller claims that
they are in good working order. Whether or not anyone would trust their lives
to one of them is debatable so my guess is they’re of little interest to
serious mariners. It’s hard to say who else would want to pay good money for
one. The £2.50 I spent was arguably too much, but it was worth it to me, just
to see how it worked. Maybe one day, when I get the time, it might be fun to
try and get it working, but I doubt it… DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1982 Original Price £800? Value Today £5
(0216) Features Depth ranges: Shallow 0 – 18 metres (0 – 60 feet), Deep 4
– 108 metres (0 – 60 fathoms), analogue rotating LED display, presettable
shallow water alarm (0,8 -- 30 metres. Piezo transducer (150kHz) Power req. 1
x 9v PP9 or external 10.8 – 32v DC Dimensions: 225
x 148 x 136mm Weight: 1.4kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 EMS Stammering Treatment Oscillator, 1969?
So what precisely is a Stammering Treatment
Oscillator? Some of what follows is conjecture but there are several references
to the use of low frequency sounds in the treatment of speech defects. The idea
appears to be that carefully selected tones mask the patient’s ability to hear
their own voice, which presumably helps in some way to overcome a stammer.
However the devices described in the patents I have seen are considerably more
sophisticated than this one, usually with multiple oscillators and additional
features for automatically varying the frequency and inserting pauses and
‘metronome’ type beats into the audio output.
It sounds vaguely plausible. Electric shock treatment has, and still is used for a wide variety of complaints and maladies, including pain suppression. True, in times past it had a poor reputation as a dangerous quack remedy but nowadays it is quite respectable and not as barbaric as it sounds. You can even buy a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation or TENS machine in your local high-street pharmacist. These deliver a safe low-current, high-voltage, high frequency shock to the skin. The jury is still out on its efficacy but at the very least it takes user's minds off their aches and pains.
This is all highly speculative of course so I would
really welcome any experts in this field, or anyone associated with EMS to get
in touch and either put me right, or point me in the right direction.
I found it at a large open-air antiques fair in the
Midlands; it was one of those cold and windy days when prices for oddities like
this can be all over the place. The stallholder didn’t seem to be particularly
attached to it and we both agreed that his opening price of £10 was a tad
optimistic so we settled on a fiver. It was more or less as you see it now. There
had been some corrosion around the battery holder but this cleaned up easily. It’s
going to take a while to sort out the electronics but it’s definitely worth
fixing, if only to discover what it actually does. What Happened To It? There were a lot of weird things going on in the sixties
and seventies but my guess is that if electric shocks were ever a treatment for
stammering, it wasn’t very successful, judging by the lack of references to it in
modern journals. Modern speech therapies appear to concentrate on the underlying
causes, in conjunction with vocal exercises, breathing techniques and so on,
rather than pills and potions, or electric shocks. Devices like this would not have been made in large numbers nor would many of them have them been kept by clinics and practitioners – this might even be the only one. Unfortunately that has little or no impact on what it is worth. I’ve put it at £10, based largely on the value of the case and the working parts inside. It might be more, especially if there’s anyone out there mad enough to collect vintage speech therapy devices, but if there is, they’re staying well hidden… UPDATE 1 (October 2017) My thanks to Brian Bottomley, the former Head of Medial Engineering at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS trust, and clearly someone who knows what he's talking about! He writes to say that the manufacturer of the Stammering Oscillator may be Electro Medical Supplies, now known as EMS Physio. They are a long established business with a track record in electrotherapy products but there is no record of this particular device on their website. Investigations are on-going and as usual, if anyone can help to fill in the gaps, we would be very interested to hear from you.
UPDATE II (Nov 2017) Electro Medical Supplies have confirmed that they were not the manufacturers. The mystery continues... DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1969? Original Price £ probably a lot! Value Today £10?
(0116) Features Variable frequency oscillator 100 – 500Hz, high voltage
generator, audio amplifier, 8 transistors, built in speaker, headphone output,
PB (?) connection, on/off volume control Power req. 2
x Ever Ready 126 4.5 volt battery packs Dimensions: 224
x 160 x 150mm Weight: 2.5kg Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 9 BayGen Freeplay Self-Powered Lantern, 1998
It all began back in 1991 when multi-talented British
stuntman, swimmer and inventor Trevor Baylis saw a TV documentary on the Aids
crisis in Africa. It concluded that one effective way to help slow the spread of this
terrible disease was education, and one of the best ways to inform people of
the dangers in poverty stricken areas was through radio broadcasts. Unfortunately radios depend
on a reliable source of power but in the places where Aids had taken hold this
was often non-existent so he began developing the now famous wind-up Freeplay radio, using
parts from an old transistor radio, toy car and a clockwork music box. After
several years of struggle trying to find backers he eventually managed to
secure investment and in 1997 he and his partners set up a company to manufacture
the Freeplay radio in South Africa. The torch, featured here, appeared the
following year, using a similar wind-up clockwork mechanism to the one in the
Freeplay radio. It’s a big torch, really big in fact, and heavy too,
it weighs in at a not inconsiderable 2kg, and those were just two of the many
reasons it wasn’t very successful, at least not in the UK, but there’s no denying that it was a clever
and ground breaking idea. It’s more than just a torch, there’s an auxillary
output socket so it can be used to power external devices that run on two AA
type batteries. It has a DC input socket as well, for charging the battery. The
torch comes with a spare bulb, it has a flash mode, which could be useful in
emergencies and as an added bonus it runs longer between cranking sessions.
Manufacturing the torch in South Africa fitted in with Trevor Baylis’s
intention of providing employment and help for people in countries most affected
by the Aids epidemic and it also meant that it was made in the area where it
was needed and could be most useful.
Clockwork has other drawbacks, including requiring
some means of stopping the spring from unwinding too quickly, and stopping the
user getting whacked by the winding handle if they accidentally let go. On the
radio this was solved by an electrical load on the generator, or the load of
the radio, which acts as a braking mechanism. The downside of this arrangement
is that the motor runs down, even when the radio is switched off
This one is an early production sample, sent to me for
review in one of the magazines I was working for at the time and it followed
hard on the heels of the hugely successful Freeplay wind-up radio. I have one
of those too, and it is still in daily use in my bathroom, but the shortcomings
of the Freeplay Torch were immediately obvious. As far as I recall rather than
write an unfavourable review I put it straight back in the box and it has been
in my loft ever since. It is in absolutely mint condition, it still works and
the nicad battery even holds a small charge. Unfortunately, though, the braking
mechanism can be a little temperamental; if the on/off switch is moved even
slightly from the off position the spring starts to rapidly unwind and super
fast reactions are needed to stop it inflicting pain… What Happened To It? The bottom line is this original Freeplay torch was
big and heavy with a weak light that only lasted for a few minutes. It was quite
pricey and if the brake failed it would do its best to break your wrist. Sadly
for Baylis his patents provided little protection for the wind-up radio and
torch concept and within a couple of years they were coming out of the
woodwork, the vast majority of them using more efficient, lighter, cheaper and
longer lasting direct drive dynamos coupled to rechargeable batteries. Freeplay
abandoned clockwork motors in favour of direct drive dynamos after a couple of
years and this probably saved the company, which continues to make a wide range
of wind-up and solar powered radios, media players, torches and mobile phone
chargers. I have yet to see another first generation Freeplay
torch on ebay, not that I spend much time looking, but I am reasonably sure
there’s not many of them around as apart from anything else they were quite expensive here in the UK.
A slightly later Mk 2 clockwork model, called the Sherpa, pops up from time to
time on ebay US but they tend to sell for just a few dollars, which suggests
that it’s not yet a collectible. To be honest I doubt that it ever will attract
much interest, or gain in value, at least not in my lifetime, but it deserves at
least a footnote in the history of portable, energy efficient illumination. So,
if you ever see one for a silly price, or on its way to the dump, rescue it,
but make sure that you check the brake is working before you wind it up! DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1998 Original Price £30.00 Value Today £10.00
(0116) Features Hand-cranked clockwork generator, folding handle, internal 700mA/h
rechargeable battery pack, 2.3-volt 350mA Xenon ultra-bright bulb (plus spare),
flash mode, aux power output (3-cols, 350mA DC), mechanical brake Power req. Wind-up
generator & 2 x AA nicad rechargeables Dimensions: 250
x 170 x 140mm Weight: 2kg Made (assembled) in: South
Africa Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Telex MRB 600 Aviation Headset, 1980
The Telex MRB 600 was a popular workhorse
headset for the General Aviation (GA) industry for several decades for three
very simple reasons, it was cheap, super tough and it worked really well. For those unfamiliar with this sort of equipment it’s
worth running through some of the reasons why the headsets used by aircraft
crew are as different as chalk and cheese to the headphones you use to listen
to your favourite tunes at home or on the move. To begin with they are fitted with
microphones, so pilots can talk to each other, other crew members and, most
important of all, air traffic control on the ground. These microphones are
deliberately insensitive, to avoid picking up background noise from the
engines, and in some light aircraft this can be painfully, and even harmfully
loud. Aviation headsets have to provide high levels of noise insulation to
protect the user’s hearing, typically encapsulating the wearer’s ears with
thick cushioned pads, though nowadays most headsets use more efficient active
noise reduction (ANR) technology. Comfort and weight are also hugely
important considerations as they are often worn for many hours at a time;
taking them off for a rest is not usually an option as apart from the
interruption to communications the high noise levels would quickly become
intolerable.
The microphone is mounted on an extendible
lightweight aluminium boom that pivots though 180 degrees, so it can be on
either side of the users head, or swivelled up and out of the way when the
pilot wants to eat, drink or take a fag break (it was allowed in the olden
days…). In normal use it sits within a centimetre or so of the user’s mouth.
The design of the headphones might suggest that it’s a stereo setup but they
are actually wired for mono sound, mainly because aircraft communication
systems are mono, and also as a safety feature, so that if one headphone
element or connection fails the other one should still operate. Each ‘phone is
surrounded by a thick cushioned pad that envelopes the whole ear, and this is
further protected by a cotton cover that provides further insulation and
comfort, and it can be easily cleaned or replaced. The adjustable
rubber-covered headbands are quite lightly sprung, so it can be worn for
extended periods without discomfort. The thick connecting cable is very
securely attached, to the frame and almost certainly means that it will survive
if someone trips over the cable. The last notable feature is the twin jack plug
connections. Whilst they look the same they are, in fact two different sizes.
The one for the headphones is a standard 0.25-inch mono audio jack, the other
one is very slightly smaller (0.206 inch) and this is for the microphone and its
power supply. The reason they are different is simply to avoid mix ups.
What Happened To It? The Telex Corporation, which began as a hearing aid manufacturer in the 1930s is still with us, and making aviation headsets though it morphed into Telex Communications in the 70s when it was taken over by Memorex and it has since undergone a number of changes, most recently being acquired by the Bosch Group. Unfortunately these changes of ownership have made it difficult to track the progress of the MBR 600 but by trawling aviation industry trade magazines it is clear that it was on sale from at least 1980 to the early 90s, before it was replaced by newer models. However, such was the build quality of this headset that flyers today are buying and selling them for quite healthy sums (£50 - £100) and apparently still being used. For those not involved or familiar with the GA market buying and selling second hand headsets is a risky business and due to the safety aspect, best avoided. Boot sale bargains, although rare are well worth considering as vintage curios, display items, or as a collectible, and if you have soldering skills they’re easily converted into retro-style gaming headsets. DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1980? Original Price £75 Value Today £25
(1215) Features 2 x magnetic earphones, wired in parallel 150 ohm
impedance, adjustable headband, carbon mike on telescopic swivel boom Power req. n/a (powered by aircraft comms panel) Dimensions: 230
x 180 x 75mm (boom mic folded) Weight: 400g Made (assembled) in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Seafix Radio Direction Finder, 1968
It’s a simple idea; until a few years ago hundreds of
radio beacons were strategically located around the world’s coastlines, beaming
a continuous stream of identity letters in Morse Code. To plot your position
all you needed was a highly directional receiver, tuned to the frequency of a
nearby beacon and by aligning the receiver’s antenna, to the ‘null’ point,
where the signal disappeared, you could take a compass bearing then draw a line
on your chart to the beacon and be fairly certain that you were somewhere along
that line. To pinpoint your position all you needed to do was take one or more
bearings from other beacons, and where the lines intersected was pretty much
where you were. In practice there was plenty to go wrong, and lots of tweaks
and fiddles that had to be applied to plots and readings to compensate for
various natural and man-made anomalies. Even experienced navigators could still
be a few nauticle miles off course, but it was usually good enough to get vessels to where they
wanted to go. This Seafix radio direction finder (RDF), which looks
a lot like a Police speed camera, was a fairly basic model and mainly designed
for use on smaller vessels that didn’t stray too far from the coast. This also
means that it has few controls so it is easy to use, ideal, in fact, for
amateur and weekend sailors, in well-charted waters.
To use it all you have to do consult your navigation
chart and identify the nearest beacon – preferably one within 50 or so miles of
your estimated or last known position -- and take a note of its frequency and
Morse Code ident. Plug in the supplied headphones, switch it on, set the
approximate frequency on the dial, and start hunting. As soon as the beacon has
been found the RDF is rotated until the signal disappears, at which
point a bearing can be taken on the compass. At night or in poor visibility
there’s a built in illuminator lamp that shines up on to the compass. A large car boot sale Dorset, was where I found this
one, not too far from Poole, which has a large marina and almost certainly
where it came from, when it was last used in anger. The stallholder, clearly not
a nautical cove, wanted £5.00 for it, even though it was in a filthy and dilapidated
state. He didn’t know where it came from, what it was for or if it worked. We briefly discussed the matter and agreed
on a much more realistic sum of £2.00. After getting it home and cleaning it up
– and under the gunk it was in surprisingly good condition -- I found signs
that at some point one of the batteries had leaked; luckily it hadn’t corroded the contacts
and the dried out deposits brushed away. The only other minor issue was
the compass. The damping fluid, probably some sort of light mineral oil, had
either been drained or it had leaked. The compass still works but takes
ages to settle down. The seals and threaded plug on the underside are intact so it
should be easy enough to refill, which I will do one day, when I find out what sort of fluid is used. With a set of batteries installed I was
pleased to find that all of the receiver functions worked perfectly, allowing
me to both listen to The Archers on Radio 4 and determine that the BBC’s Long Wave transmitter is on a bearing of 310 degrees (magnetic) from my South London location. Sadly there were no working
beacons in range so I’ll have to use more traditional methods to figure out exactly
where I am. What Happened To It? Unfortunately it is next to useless; nautical RDF was
driven into obsolescence by GPS and most NDBs were decommissioned by 2008. A
few remain, and it is theoretically possible to use it to triangulate on
aircraft beacons but these tend to be inland, so reception is patchy and you probably
wouldn’t want to rely on it. The manufacturers, a British company called
Electronic Laboratories suffered a similar fate and the company, which appears
to have had few other strings to its bow, other than RDF, persevered with several more advanced models in the 80s and 90s, was eventually dissolved in the
mid noughties. RDFs like this one have only novelty value and as
fairly poor receivers of a handful of Long Wave broadcasts but that doesn’t
mean they should be forgotten or discarded. RDF played a vital part in the long
history of navigation on the high seas and over the 50 or so years it was in
operation it was responsible for helping countless seafarers to safely reach
their destination, no doubt saving many lives in the process. It’s also an
excellent way to demonstrate the rudiments of radio navigation, though these
days, with a GPS and highly accurate maps available on most smartphones, map
reading has become something of a lost art. Basic models like this one have yet
to become serious collectibles and probably won’t go much up in value anytime
soon, but if you see one, and the price is right, grab it. Trust me, their day
will come and sooner or later one will pop up on the Antiques Roadshow and
prices will surely soar… DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1968 Original Price £25 Value Today £10
(1215) Features AM receiver 200 – 400 kHz (navigational & broadcast
bands), 4 transistors, ferrite antenna, rotary tuning, variable sensitivity,
oil filled compass with sighting prism, switchable illuminator lamp, audio
output (3.5mm jack), removable handle & lanyard, Morse code embossed on
battery cover Power req. 6
x 1.5-volt AA cells Dimensions: 180
x 265 x 80mm (mounted handle & compass) Weight: 950g Made (assembled) in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Eagle International Loudhailer, 1970?
It’s badged Eagle International, who were quite well
known from the 60s to the late 80s for a range of budget-price audio and
electronic products. I remember it as one of those cheap and cheerful brands
that were good at leaping onto bandwagons, but never managed to produce
anything particularly remarkable or innovative. Their stuff was cheap, though,
so it was no great loss when it eventually packed up.
Judging by the design of the amp – a simple push-pull
configuration – and the transistors (germanium types) I suspect that it has an
output of around 15 watts. It drives an 8-ohm horn speaker and it is powered by
eight 1.5-volt C cells, which live in the cylindrical compartment behind the
horn. There’s also a socket on the side for an external 12-volt power supply.
The lack of interest from other car-booters was
understandable. It looked in a very sorry state with the horn and microphone
covered in crud and wires hanging out of the mike plug. The clasp that holds the
battery cover in place was hanging off and it looked like it had led a hard
life, with chipped and scraped paint on the handle and rim of the horn. However, the battery compartment looked
clean enough and it takes more than a couple of loose wires and a few scuff marks to put
me off… I wasn’t too surprised that it didn’t work after the
cover clamp and plug connections were fixed, though the speaker gave an
encouragingly loud pop, which suggested that the amp was probably okay. The
first hurdle was figuring out how to take it apart. It turned out to be a bit
of a nightmare with lots of hidden screws that could only be reached with an
extra long and thin screwdriver, and a torch. When I finally managed to
separate the two sections and remove the amplifier module I was confronted by a
rat’s nest of wires, several of which had come adrift. Others were hanging by a
thread, so the first thing to do was take some photos so there would be a
reasonable chance of getting them back to where they belonged when they broke
away. Luckily it was fairly obvious where the wayward
cables had come from so once it was reassembled it was time to give it another
try. It remained stubbornly silent but a few quick prods with a signal injector
pointed to the trouble being at the front end, at or around the mike. The
problem turned out to be a half-arsed attempt to solder a loose wire on the
mike socket and once that was fixed it sprang into life, and it is pretty loud! What Happened To It? No doubt someone, somewhere, has written a history of
the amplified loudhailer (as opposed to entirely passive, shout-though megaphones…)
but if it exists I can't find it. My guess is the earliest examples
appeared somewhere between 1910 and 1920, coinciding with the development of triode valves, the key components in the first audio amplifiers.
Police ‘bullhorns’ regularly appear in gangster movies made in the 30s and
40s but apart from improvements in amplifiers, batteries and materials, from
the outside modern ones don’t look significantly different to vintage models. The
back-story of Eagle International is also difficult to pin down and whilst the
name or brand lives on, the trail of the company responsible for making or
marketing this particular model goes cold in 2000. I am under no illusion that loudhailers from the last
40 or 50 years are of little no interest to anyone but me, and possibly a
handful of like-minded technology nerds, but really old ones – pre 1950s say –
almost certainly are worth something. If nothing else they appear to be
extremely rare and occasional searches on ebay for ancient valve-based units
have proved largely fruitless. The £1.50 I paid for this one was a very good deal, but
the car boot stallholder’s original asking price of £5.00 probably wasn’t too
far off the mark. It is still useable but I wouldn’t be confident using it for
making important announcements. If you want one for its intended purpose
then you would be better off splashing out £20 - £30 on a modern example, which
I suspect would also be lighter, louder and more reliable. On the other hand it
wouldn’t have a fraction of the character of a vintage model like this one, and
who knows what momentous or historic voices and words came out of that horn? DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1970? Original Price £30? Value Today £10
(1115) Features 4 transistor amplifier approx 15 Watts RMS, 8-ohm horn
speaker, siren, attention light, detachable anti-howl microphone, external
power socket, carry/shoulder strap Power req. 6
x 1.5-volt ‘C’ cells, 12VDC external Dimensions: 400
x 220mm Weight: 2kg Made (assembled) in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Pifco 888.998 Lantern & Spotlight, 1965
Check out the snazzy features; it has a pivoting
spotlight, producing a ‘brilliant beam’ according to the box it came in, and on
the top there’s a dome lamp that flashes; it even comes with a choice of clear
and red coloured domes (the latter is sadly missing on this example). It’s a
multi-mode design with a sliding switch on the back that selects spotlight
only, flashing dome, or both together, and the carry handle rotates through a
full 360 degrees. Who wouldn’t want one? It was just the job for motorists,
campers and power cuts, which were a fairly common event in those days. This one is made by Pifco, it has no name or model
number but it is stamped ‘UK Design No. 888.998’ and ‘Empire Made’ (Hong Kong)
and identical to the one that I proudly owned back in the day. I had forgotten
all about it but by chance I stumbled across a couple of pages of them selling
on ebay for frankly stupid money, touted as ‘retro chic’ lanterns for trendy
glampers and caravanners…
Whilst prices on ebay are on the way up it is still
possible to find fairly decent examples, like this one, at car boot sales and
flea markets. At the Surrey car boot where this came from I didn’t have the
nerve to haggle with the stallholder over the 50 pence asking price. He
reckoned it worked but apologised and said he couldn’t test it because the batteries
were no longer made. By pure coincidence I spotted a stall a couple of rows
away that were selling the 6 volt 4R25 battery it uses for just £1.50, and I
have subsequently seen them in several high street stores, like Wilkinson and
Robert Dyas for well under a fiver.
What Happened To It Pifco or the Provincial Incandescent Fittings Company
was founded in Manchester back in 1900 and it is still going strong today,
distributing all sorts of useful household bits and bobs from around the world,
though the current line-up doesn’t seem to include any torches. It is difficult
to be precise about the chronology of this design but it was definitely around
in the early to mid 1960s, and I’m sure I recall seeing this self-same model on
sale well into the seventies. The shape evolved over the years, though, and from what I
have seen later models have flat topped ‘domes’, a slightly larger spotlight and
the wire handle morphed into a handy stand, so the whole lamp could be tilted,
but essentially it was the same tried and tested design. Chunky metal lanterns like the 888.998 couldn’t last,
though. They must have been expensive to make; plastic was a whole lot cheaper
and manufacturers could be much more adventurous with their designs, yet under
the skin torches and lanterns remained virtually unchanged until the mid to
late eighties. At around that time lantern technology took a big leap forward
following improvements in rechargeable NiCad and sealed lead-acid batteries and
the introduction of low voltage halogen bulbs. This resulted in a rash of bulky
but very powerful hand-held flashlights – mostly coloured yellow for some
reason -- with claims of millions of candlepower light outputs. The really big
change, though, came with the introduction of high-brightness white LEDs and by
the late 90s they were becoming cheap enough to use in everyday torches. LEDs
are much more robust than traditional incandescant torch bulbs, they last almost
indefinitely and use significantly less power for a given light output, but
initially the only way to create a respectably bright beam was to use multiple
LEDs. By the mid noughties single high-power LEDs started to appear and have
subsequently fallen in price to the point where they are now the bulb of choice
for almost all serious torches and lanterns. This is excellent news for collectors of vintage torches and lanterns, and if this isn’t yet a popular hobby it probably will be soon,
judging by the prices being asked for old lanterns like the 888.988 on ebay. Even
manky ones seem to be going for upwards of £15 to £20, so get in quick, while
they can still be found for a few bob at your local car boot. Who knows, a complete set of boxed Pifco lanterns from the sixties and seventies could one day provide a welcome boost for your retirement fund… DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1965 Original Price £5? Value Today £15
(1015) Features Hinged spotlight (5.5-volt, 2.5 watt PR13.5S bulb) with
polished steel reflector, flashing light (MES type flashing bulb) with clear
and red coloured domes, slide switch for three-mode operation (spotlight, dome
& both together), adjustable carry handle Power req. 6-volt
4R25/PJ996 lantern battery Dimensions: 170
x 90mm (195 x 145mm inc. spotlight & handle) Weight: 400g Made (assembled) in: Empire Made (Hong Kong) Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Micronta 3001 Metal Detector, 1979
This was one of the first and certainly the most interesting
things I ever found with my home-built metal detector, (from plans in ETI
magazine), back in the late 1970s. I had been waving it around my back garden
and nearby fields and forest for several hours and apart from the small bomb
(which came from the forest) all I ever managed to find was lots of ring-pulls,
aluminium foil from fag packets and a washer or two. In short it was huge
disappointment and my hopes of discovering buried treasure quickly fizzled out.
Perhaps, if I had owned one of these, a Micronta
3001, which was sold in Tandy stores at around the same time, I might have
persevered. Within a few minutes of getting this one home from the boot sale I
managed to find three old toy cars, numerous nuts, bolts and bits of rusty metal,
two tops from fish paste jars, 3 old pennies and a sixpence; it was already paying
for itself… In the scheme of things the Micronta 3001 is only one
step up from a toy metal detector, and nowhere near as sensitive as today’s
‘pro’ detectors but it really does work and it can find smallish metal objects
like coins at a depth of a centimetre or two. It also has a rudimentary
discriminator facility and supposedly can tell the difference between ferrous
and non-ferrous metals, though to date gold and silver
objects have proved elusive.
This 3001 came from a Surrey car boot sale. The
stallholder wasn’t sure if it worked but it looked like it had been well looked
after and was in pretty good shape. The battery compartment was clean so after
a very brief haggle a price of £2.50 was agreed. A short while later, with a
set of batteries installed, it burst into life and it proved to be impressively
sensitive; as soon as time permits I’ll give it a proper test run. What Happened To It? The 3001 was a remarkably long-lived product, first
featured in the 1979 edition of the Radio Shack catalogue, listed as the
‘Standard’ model and costing $39.95. I can recall seeing it in the UK Tandy
catalogue at around the same time and working on the typical dollar pound conversion
rates at the time I suspect it sold on this side of the pond for somewhere £25
and £35. It remained virtually unchanged until its last appearance in the 1997
catalogue; the following year it was replaced by much sleeker and more
sophisticated version, though for some reason the 3001 model number was
retained. By the way, in case you are wondering how I know so much about Radio
Shack catalogues, it’s because there’s a brilliant online archive,
covering the years 1940 to 2011. Fascinating stuff for gadget collectors. Metal detectoring has been a popular and sometimes
controversial pursuit for many years and there have been some spectacular finds
over the years, however, it is unlikely that relatively simple designs like
this one were involved. These day’s high-end models with all the bells and
whistles will find and identify deeply buried objects and can cost thousands of
pounds. Cheap and unsophisticated detectors like the 3001 seem to attract little
interest from collectors and serious detectorists, though, even if they are a good
few years old, so prices tend to be quite modest. I doubt very much that they
will ever increase much in value; there does appear to be a lively market
for 'professional’ detectors but the chances of finding one at a boot sale for
a tenner or so is probably quite small. DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1979 Original Price $39.95
(£25) Value Today £10
(1015) Features Sensitivity meter; controls: on/off volume, variable
peak/sensitivity adjustment, ferrous/non-ferrous discriminator. Telescopic
detector head, built-in speaker, 3.5mm mono jack earphone socket Power req. 6
x 1.5v AA cells Dimensions: Search
coil 180mm dia; Hand module 250 x 140 x 100mm, fully extended 930mm Weight: 900g Made (assembled) in: China Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Olympia DG 15 S Mag Disc Dictating Machine, 1963
It’s the Olympia SD 15 S, a quite remarkable machine
that in terms of the technology might even qualify as the grandfather of today’s PC
floppy and hard disc drives, and arguably a very distant cousin of early video
disc systems – something else we'll come back to later on. The recording medium is a thin and flexible
plastic disc – 155mm in diameter, a little smaller than a 45rpm vinyl single --
coated with the same sort of ferric oxide based magnetic material used on audio
and video tape. As the disc spins a recording/replay head traverses the surface
of the disc and recordings can be played back or repeated more or less
instantly simply by moving the lever on the right hand side of the front panel.
I found it on ebay and fully expected it to
attract some lively bidding from vintage tech collectors. It came with its
original leather carry case and vital accessories and from the photos it appeared
to be in very good condition, though it was described as being for spares or
repairs. I didn’t bother bidding and it was only by chance that I remembered
that the auction was coming to an end, so, with a just couple of minutes to go
I had a look, to see how high it had gone, but there were no bids. More
out of mischief than anything else I placed a £10 bid, to get things started
and wind up what I supposed were hoards of collectors holding back until the
last few seconds, and waited for the frenzy to begin. As you can see it never
did, I was the only bidder and it was mine for the opening price of £5.00, plus
£3.00 shipping. I still cannot understand how it came to be ignored
but I now have what seems to be a rare and unusual item of office equipment,
and the icing on the cake is that it works. It was pretty much DOA when it
arrived but the condition was exactly as described and it had been very well
looked after. Fortunately it came with a working mains adaptor and once plugged
in there were some distinct signs of life. A loud hiss from the mike suggested that the amp
was working, and it sounded as though the drive motor was running. It didn’t
take much to get it going again and most of the problems were mechanical, due
to dried or caked lubricants on the drive train and pickup arm bearings. After
a thorough clean up and oil change it was running smoothly again. Fortunately it came with an envelope containing three
discs, and on an empty part of one disc I was able to make, and playback a
short recording. The discs had clearly been very well used and the magnetic
coating was well past its sell-by date with background hiss only slightly below
the level of the recorded sound. There were even a few short snippets of
dictation from a previous user and judging by the content, these dated from the 60s or 70s. There was another surprise and the internal rechargeable battery hadn’t leaked and could even hold a
charge for few minutes. What Happened To It? There is virtually nothing about this machine on the
web so I am unsure about the date of manufacture but the early sixties seems
like a very fair bet. Passive components (resistors, capacitors etc) on the
circuit board and the six germanium transistors (2 x AC122, AC150 & 3 x
heat sink cased AC117s) are all from around that era. The original selling
price is also something of a mystery and when I get time I will do some
research, looking for adverts and products reviews in the magazines of the day, but
based on similar products it probably wasn’t cheap and I would not be at all
surprised to learn that it was somewhere between £50 and £100, or upwards of £1000 in today’s money (early 2015). It is also difficult to say how long it was around,
but the lack of information online and almost total absence of any others on
ebay etc, are strong clues to it being no more than a few years, and it clearly didn't sell in large numbers... That also ties in with the rise and rise of relatively
inexpensive and highly portable cassette tape-based dictating machines, like
the Grundig EN3 (1964) and Philips PM85 (1967), which had swept aside almost
all rival recording formats by the end of the sixties. Earlier I mentioned a
fairly tenuous connection with videodisc recording systems, and there is indeed
a bizarre similarity between the discs used by the DG 15 S and the CED
(Capacitance Electronic Disc) system that was developed by RCA (also in the
1960s) and later bought to market in the early 1980s with the assistance of
Hitachi. CED used a disc with a spiral groove, but information on the disc was
recorded by varying the depth of the groove -- rather than a magnetic track – producing
minute changes in capacitance that represented the recorded video and audio
signal. Without any other examples to compare it with, it is
impossible to say how much this DG 15 S is worth, though I am convinced that if
it had been spotted by a couple of vintage recording equipment enthusiasts it
would have fetched a lot more than the £5.00 I paid for it. But I will play
safe and put a value of £30 on this one, thanks to it being in such good
condition, working order, having the original case and a useful assortment of
accessories. As always I am open to clarification and corrections, and if
anyone has a manual, or can tell me the date of manufacture and original price,
please let me know. DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1963 Original Price £75? Value Today £30,
(0515) Features 155mm
magnetic disc (10 mins duration), remote record, pause function, volume &
input level control, manual track/position selection, battery/recording level
meter, bulk erase, telephone recording function Power req. Internal
rechargeable & battery 30VDC mains adaptor Dimensions: 285
x 195 x 55mm Weight: 2.8kg Made (assembled) in:
Germany Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8 Racal Acoustics AFV Headset, 1985?
The obvious question is why is it so big and bulky, surely it could have been made smaller and lighter without compromising performance? Modern AFV headsets are indeed a little smaller, but not by much, and once you look closely at its intended application it is not hard to see how it came to be designed this way.
The boom microphone on a headset has to do a particularly difficult job. It is vulnerable to impact damage, so it has to be sturdily built, and the sensitivity has to be set so that the high level of background noise won’t drown out the wearer’s voice. However, this also means that it has to be positioned very close to the user’s mouth, but not so close that it’s going to knock out teeth or get in the way. All this adds up to some tricky mechanical linkages, to allow it to be easily adjusted, and quickly swung out of the way if needs be. It’s vastly over-engineered but it does the job though modern AFV headsets now use a simple flexible stalk, which should also be lighter and more reliable. Keeping this heavy headset in place whilst being thrown about inside an AFV has been given a very high priority and there are three points of contact. On the top and bottom – to go around top of the wearer’s head and underneath the chin, there are adjustable webbing straps, and on the back there’s a padded and adjustable metal neckband that also carries the cable for the left side headphone. Once it has been adjusted it is surprisingly comfortable, which is just as well as it may have to be worn, in extremely arduous conditions, for prolonged periods. Connection to the outside world is handled buy a single short cable, terminated in a standard 7-pin bayonet-fit connector. This carries audio signals for the headphone and microphone and press-to-talk (PTT) switching. An external PTT switch or ‘pressel’ is on the end of a short leads and this plugs into a 3-pin socket just below the microphone mount. This means that the headset can be used passively – to listen to what’s going on -- by the crew or passengers in the vehicle -- or actively, with a pressel, in intercom mode or when connected to communications equipment. I found this one at an open air antiques fair held in Surrey several times a year. It was, as usual, pouring with rain; it appeared to be in very good shape and the stallholder was only asking £10 for it; he looked pretty wet and miserable so I didn’t bother haggling. The ethics of buying ex-military equipment at markets and fairs are always a bit confused and complicated – for me anyway. In theory being a fully paid up UK taxpayer I already own it, or a part of it, at least. I also have it in the back of my mind that the Ministry of Defence probably paid several hundred pounds for something like this when new, and without knowing how it came to be on the market – and there are many routes, legitimate and otherwise -- there is a chance that I could be buying stolen property. It doesn’t trouble me for very long though, and being vintage equipment it is extremely unlikely that any AFV crews are looking for it…
What Happened To It? Racal Acoustics are still in the business of
manufacturing ‘High Noise Headsets and Helmets’ along with many other items of
communications equipment. One of the modern equivalents is the RA315 integrated
helmet system. It’s a direct descendent of this one with the same basic layout
and features, though lighter and more sophisticated with optional digital
automatic noise reduction, improved comfort and immunity to electronic
interference. There is a huge market for all types of vintage
ex-military equipment and prices are all over the place, so the best advice is
not to get involved with the expensive or specialist stuff unless you know
exactly what you are doing. Interesting ancillary gear, like this, is pretty
safe though, and as well as being of interest to collectors and restorers, it can
be put to some practical use. Headsets are cheap and plentiful enough for a
spot of hacking and experimentation. For example, it wouldn’t take much to
modify a headset like this to work with a video or PC gaming setup, though it
would almost certainly involve replacing the headphone inserts, microphone
parts and cable. It would also make a striking set of stereo ‘phones’, though
you would need to put a fair amount of work into the acoustics to get it
sounding halfway decent, and how about a eye-catching headset for your
smartphone? This one was a good buy and the condition is excellent but it is by
no means unusual and at the time of writing there were several similar AFV
headsets, some with helmets, on ebay, with prices ranging from £15 to £50, so
if you want to get noticed on the bus, train or tube – arguably not too far
removed from an AFV -- dump those boring old Beats and get something with a bit
of grunt and retro style! DUSTY DATAFirst seen 1985? Original Price £? (probably hundreds ££s...) Value Today £10 - £50
(0115) Features Articulated
boom microphone, adjustable head and chin bands, acoustic valves, helmet
attachment studs, standard 7-pin connector, secondary pressel connector, adjustable
head and chin straps, padded neck band Power req. n/a Dimensions: 150
x 210 x 170mm (ish…) Weight: 720g Made (assembled) in:
England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 POM Park-O-Meter Model S, 1964?
It’s a machine, but one that has to work unattended, outdoors, often for several decades, under constant attack from everything that nature can throw at it. They also have to be able to withstand continual physical abuse from disgruntled users, and more determined attacks from n’er-do-wells, trying to extract the coins inside. As they are replaced most get sold for scrap, so it is up to us to help save them from extinction. The good news is that a few survive to make it onto the market, and this is the story of one of them. It’s a POM Incorporated Model S, probably made in the
early to mid 1960s, but it’s hard to be exact as this now classic design came
into service in the late 50s and remained virtually unchanged for the best part
of 20 years. By the way, the name POM derives from early designs, called Park-O-Meters. This model is made in the USA, in Russellville Arkansas
to be precise and POM was, and still is a really big noise in the business;
according to its corporate video it makes almost 30 percent of world’s parking
meters, so they’ve clearly got the hang of it…
Providing the coin is exactly the right size, as the
handle on the front is turned a small lever engages a set of teeth on the
clockwork timer mechanism, simultaneously winding the spring, moving an
indicator to the amount of time that has been paid for, and lowering the yellow
and red Expired and Violation flags. When the handle reaches its limit the
coin, drops or rather is propelled by a small spring, into the slot in the top
of the coin box. It is elegantly simple, there is very little to go
wrong and it uses what I suspect may be a high quality Swiss-made timer
movement. There are numerous clever touches that can only have
come from decades of experience in manufacturing these things. For example, the
top part is hinged and it opens flat into the ‘service position’ allowing easy
access to all of the innards. The timer mechanism and the display parts (time
remaining pointer, flags etc.) are combined into a single module, held in place
by just three screws so it can be removed and replaced in just a few seconds.
It would also be a relatively simple matter to adjust or recalibrate a unit,
which is clearly an important consideration when there may be hundreds or
possibly even thousands of them in a city or municipality. Whilst it will take
a sledgehammer to damage the case the viewing windows at the top are doomed to
be scratched, cracked or broken, though they are made from a thick Perspex
material. Replacing one or both of them is another routine task and each window
is held in place by a handful of screws and there’s a rubber seal, to keep the
weather out. It has two locks and these have to be tough and
secure, but this can be a huge pain for collectors as most of the time an old meter will
not come with a set of keys. Basically there are only two ways to get these
things open; either drill the locks, or pick them. Drilling is the quickest
option but it can be destructive. Fortunately, on this model the top barrel lock
can be opened without going through or damaging the keyhole. The lock’s latch mechanism
is held in place on the rear side by a ‘blind’ bolt that has no slot, so all
you have to do is drill it through the centre and the front will pop open. It can then be replaced with a screw or bolt that can be easily undone. The
tubular lock on the coin box can also be drilled but it’s a tricky job, that
snaps drills like twigs, and there is a good chance that it will visibly ruin
the front of it. Surprisingly there is a fairly quick and simple picking
method. If you know where to look on the Internet you can find pick tools for
this type of lock for a few pounds, and they are very easy to use. The tricky
bit is working out the exact type you will need as there are several variations
in the size and the number of pins used, but this is something you can figure
out with a little research, a torch and a magnifying glass. As an added bonus
this type of picking tool can be used to derive a set of numerical values that
any competent locksmith can use to create a new key. |