[Tech1] Supermarket milk

[Nick Ware]

Was milk, now Asbestos.
My Mum used to put an asbestos disc under the saucepan, on the gas stove. I never understood the thinking behind that, because why not just turn the flame down a bit?

My first radio that wasn’t a crystal set, was a valve radio (obvs.). I used to listen to it under the bed covers every night, and liked the fact that the mains cable got quite warm. My bedroom was very cold in winter, the windows usually frosted up on the inside. No central heating in that old vicarage, and double glazing was decades away! So, the radio: it had a high resistance mains cable that dropped mains Voltage down to what the valve ‘heaters’ required. Prob about 6V with four or five valves wired in series. The cable was made of high resistance wire wound round an Asbestos rope and cotton covered. Can you imagine anything more potentially lethal? And yet that was commonplace in radios and early valve TV’s.

Nick Ware - Sent from my iPad mini 5