Adwatch UK

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

An advert for a selection of dangerous-looking Belling electric fires, circa 1961:



I wonder how many people actually used fires like these in playrooms and bathrooms?

Comments

[versailles-rose.livejournal.com]

I lived in England in the early 1970's. My Brit mother-in-law had a Belling Heater. She used it ALL the time in the bathroom. She thought nothing of it!

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I think people only really stopped using electrical items in the bathroom after a spate of well-publicised fatal accidents involving things such as fires and hairdryers shorting out when they got exposed to too much steam ;)

[versailles-rose.livejournal.com]

Oh, trust me, there was no such thing as STEAM in that bathroom! They didn't have hot water heater for the bathroom till 1978! (they just had one of those small water heaters by the kitchen sink!) LOL! You had to carry kettles filled with hot water upstairs to the bathroom. Once the tub was filled, the water was had cooled off!

But yes, I could see shorts happening, specially if they put the heater too close to the tub!

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I remember those water heaters, although my household never had one. A variation of them is still in common use in office premises around the UK ;)

[mantriddrone.livejournal.com]

funnily enough my parents still have two of them. i try and make sure they never use them but every winter when i see them there there are

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Not only are they dangerous (older ones tend to explode at inopportune moments!), they are really heavy on electricity.

[mantriddrone.livejournal.com]

explode. yea i can believe that. i don't trust them one bit. defiantly right about the heavy consumption

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I had one explode in a shower of blue sparks when I was standing next to it once!

[mantriddrone.livejournal.com]

oh fuck, ditch that bitch!

[vxo.livejournal.com]

The worst heater I've seen was an old 1950s one with a parabolic reflector, and a coil of wire around a ceramic form... the only protection on the thing was like eight wires around the front, through which you could easily reach with your entire hand.

I cut the plug right off the type HPD cotton/asbestos yarn insulated power cord as soon as I saw it.

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing those things in junk shops in the 1980s. Lethal buggers, they were.