I am a retired electrician and found this very interesting. In my early years as an apprentice I worked on some D.C. in the old post office in Cleveland. I also installed knob and tube in the early 1960s and remember working on old houses that had the wooden conduit installed in the basement. We converted some of the connecting outlets to modern wiring. Early wiring was always black so finding the neutral was always a problem. Discovered old wiring to outside post lights that was covered with a lead sheath to make it waterproof. Wiring methods have always interested me.
@@stuffoflife575 Cleveland was behind the curve in converting to Romex in the sixties so we were still installing knob and tube but we had to add the ground wire which is what finally killed knob and tube because it added a third more to the cost. There are still houses in the Cleveland area that have grounded knob and tube wiring. Since it was done with new wire it didn’t have the problems that the older wiring had with being insulated.
I used to own an old house in Baltimore back in the 1970s which was built around 1905. In the basement, the original wood conduits and porcelain wall switch base were still in place on the stairway wall, although inactive. A new light switch was installed at some later date. The gaslight piping was still in the walls and first floor ceiling but cut off just past the gas meter in the basement. The house next door still had active gaslighting, at least in the basement, from what the neighbor told me. Working for Baltimore Gas & Electric before retiring in 2016, the history of the gas side of the company always fascinated me. We still had field books showing where mains were laid going back well before the Civil War. Some of those original mains were still active as late as the 1980s. Some of the oldest gas records still had "The Gaslight Company of Baltimore" on the cover, which company was started by Rembrandt Peale in 1816.
It’s kinda funny that the original desk lamp plug is safer than modern plugs. The ground prong is longer than the bare contacts so that you can’t touch them without it unplugged. Modern plugs can hang halfway out while still live.
