Vintage Electrical Appliance #4 - The GEC "Portable" Radio

[Flying10uk]

Is that what it is?

Yes, because if the appliance didn't exceed 5 amps it use to be considered acceptable to "tap into" a lighting circuit which were fused at 5 amps at the consumer unit. We wouldn't use a similar adaptor today and it wouldn't be considered safe or acceptable because all portable appliances are fused at the plug, in the UK today. None of the round pin plugs that were in common use in the 1950's in the UK had a fuse and all relied, solely, on the fuse at the consumer unit for protection.

As I understand it through talking to my late father the way that the round pin sockets were supposed to wired was one socket with one wire going back to the consumer unit for the 15 amp, yes 15 amps, round pin sockets, protected by a 15 amp fuse. If I remember correctly what my father said, for the smaller 5 amp round pin sockets it could be a maximum of 2 x 5 amp sockets with one wire going back to the consumer unit protected by a 5 amp fuse. As a consequence, generally, there use to be a lot less number of sockets in a house and was why sometimes people used a light socket as a power source. There was an adaptor socket available for plugging into light fittings that allowed you to carry on using the light while also tapping into the socket to power something like a radio. You did get people trying to increase the number of round pin sockets in their house by wiring sockets in incorrectly/inappropriately which was never safe and risked overloading the circuit and the possibility of causing a fire. The modern UK system of each portable appliance being protected by it's own fuse in the plug is a much better and safer system to how it use to be.

THE ABOVE IS FOR INTEREST ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS ELECTRICAL ADVICE. FOR ANYONE REQUIRING ADVICE FOR ELECTRICAL WORK A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN SHOULD BE CONSULTED.