My old iron…
The other day, when I was in the middle of ironing, all the electrical power went off in the house. I assumed it was a power cut and checked with neighbours. I was surprised to find it affected only our house.
I turned the power-supply trip-switches off and back on. Nothing. I switched off the lights, radio, iron, etc and tried again, realising I had missed one of the trip-switches the first time. Hooray! Let there be light!
I switched the iron back on. Bang! Everything went again. But at least I knew what it was now. I have long had a spare iron in a box in the back of the cupboard under the stairs for just such an emergency, so I rummaged and got it out. I took it from its box.
My spare iron…
Just one problem…
No plug…
I hadn’t realised that it was SO old that it was manufactured at a time when we used to put our own plugs on electrical appliances. I was always very good at it. But just at that moment I couldn’t be bothered to find one in the toolbox and fix it.
Modern moulded and rewireable British Standard (BS 1363) square-pin plugs – image from Wikipedia…
Thanks to the Plugs and Sockets etc (Safety) Regulations 1994, in the UK plugs must already be fitted to appliances by the supplier when we buy them. Manufacturers and importers had to do this from February 1, 1995. Now small appliances may come with three-pin plugs in an assortment of colours, although they tend to be white or black.
With hindsight, I must have acquired the iron a very long time ago, as it was at a time in my life when I still bought women’s magazines! It is about the only thing I have ever won – in a reader giveaway – a just-send-your-name-and-address-on-a-postcard kind of thing.
At least it had the “modern” wiring colours – brown for live, blue for neutral and green and yellow striped for the earth. Before the 1970s it used to be red, black and green.
But all this took me back, much farther, to my childhood days of round-pinned plugs made of Bakelite (pronounced Baker-lite). We had three-pronged plugs that were “earthed” and for some items two-pin plugs, a bit like those still used for shavers and electric toothbrushes, except that they were bulky and round. And all of these plugs were dark brown.
Bakelite plugs sold recently on ebay…
In fact, the whole house in those days seemed dark brown. We didn’t have bright colours until I was a teenager and rebelled by painting the living room yellow and my bedroom emerald, purple and white…
In my mind Bakelite was the plastic we had before we knew the word plastic existed. According to Wikipedia it was developed by Belgian-born chemist Leo Baekeland in New York in 1907.
The story of synthetic plastics is very complicated. All I know is that we suddenly seemed to have lots of polythene, expanded polystyrene (Styrofoam) and PVC in the 1960s – but Wikipedia suggests many of these things had existed in a small way for decades before that.
Anyway, as well as the Bakelite plugs and sockets, we had a Bakelite TV. Not quite like this image, but you will get the general idea…
A Bush Bakelite TV from the 1950s – click on the image to go to a very informative vintage TV site…
We didn’t have a Bakelite radio, as we went straight from a valve radio in a wooden cabinet to a tiny Dansette transistor radio in blue and cream plastic just like this one.
But there were a lot of Bakelite radios around and this one is beautiful…
Bush Bakelite radio from the 1940s…
I chose this radio as an illustration because it brings back all the old stations we tuned into on the dial, such as BBC Light, BBC Third, Hilversum and Luxembourg…
Old radio stations…
If we had owned a telephone (we didn’t), that would also have been of brown Bakelite…
Those were the days… a heavy Bakelite phone – an image from Wikimedia Commons…
Bakelite was apparently also used for cameras and jewellery…
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A Kodak Brownie 127 camera of Bakelite from the 1950s – picture from Wikimedia Commons…
This Bakelite jewellery, now valuable in its own right, imitated amber. There’s a lot more information on the Amerikanki site, click on the image…
Oh, and then there were Bakelite guitars!
Magnificent 1935 Rickenbacker electro Spanish guitar of metal-trimmed Bakelite – image from Wikimedia Commons…
But what of my broken iron? By modern standards it had a good innings – maybe eight years? It’s a sad fact that these days it is impossible to get small electrical appliances mended. So it went for recycling at the civic dump. Meanwhile it took me precisely an hour to catch a bus into town, dash to Argos and come back with a brand new iron. What took the longest was browsing the catalogue to decide what to get. I ended up with another Tefal, but with several useful new features.
My new iron…
It’s a far cry from my first iron, which was something like this…
A vintage iron on ebay – although this is American, my first iron was similar, but with no go-faster wing at the back and with a crimson trim…
In those days we had no steam irons, so used a damp tea-towel under the iron to press clothes. But don’t get me started on my trip down memory lane again! What are your memories of Bakelite? Or of ironing in “the olden days”?
The Squirrelbasket 
I have a bakelite radio tucked away in my wardrobe. Something broke inside that’s expensive to replace so it’s sat in there a long time now. The curves of the inside bits of the speakers are made of paper and they were cracking too. We had a bakelite phone when I was a child. It had a little draw underneath where you could store telephone numbers. The drawer was very thin – hardly anyone had phones and numbers were short! Bakelite seemed very solid. It cracked at times but mostly it endured. Plastic is iffy. Some is good but there’s a silver kind round now that falls to part very easily.
It’s hard to throw things away, isn’t it? And some of the most unexpected items turn out to be collectable! Not sure about broken radios, though. We didn’t have a phone until I had a house of my own, so phone messages would be relayed via the shop across the road or we would use the red phonebox in the village. Those were the days – Not! They say people can’t remember phone numbers any more, as they don’t need to as they are stored on their mobiles (cell phones to the Americans). I’m intrigued by your silver plastic that falls apart! Where might I find it? Tell me more…
WOW ! This certainly brings back memories Pat.Our first T.V was Bakelite which had a magnifyer to attach over the original screen.Saturdays all our neighbours came to watch football.(I hated that). I did like our bakelite radio though. Now, of course Bakelite is very popular to collectors.
I am amazed how bad our black and white TVs must have been! When you look at a colour TV these days, you can see every hair on someone’s face. I suppose it’s reasonable gathering around a TV to watch something, but I always think it’s funny when you see those old photos of families sitting around a radio, as if they are listening to a real person.
Best wishes 🙂
Ah thr memories. As they say ‘those were the days’
In a way, they were. In other ways, not! I still regret not writing to my father enough when I was away at college – if only we had possessed a Bakelite phone!
Best wishes 🙂
Ah, Bakelite. I have some buttons, bought at a flea market in Paris. Even the cards they are mounted on bring up a sense of nostalgia.
I didn’t think to mention buttons. Here is a link to some on Etsy. Not sure what yours are like, but they can be very colourful, can’t they? Not dark brown at all!
Best wishes 🙂
I do remember tuning in the shortwave radio. Is the new iron any good? Ours is fading on us. It’s been dropped twice too often.
Gosh yes, my father had a thing about trying to find something interesting on short-wave radio.
I am happy with the new iron, it’s quite light because the sole-plate isn’t a big triangle, it ends in a rounded point at the bottom instead of a broad base. The broad base for standing it on is plastic instead. It also has a way of keeping the reasonably long cord/cable out of the way. And the steam is good, it’s easy to fill with water and there is an eco setting. It wasn’t that cheap, though…
I wonder what brand names you have in your neck of the woods? Tefal is very European to my mind (the iron was made in France).
Best wishes 🙂
The silver plastic – it’s brittle and everywhere. My phone is made from it. My washing machine too. It’s lighter than other plastics. You can tell when you pick up different colours of the same object.
Red phone boxes – I once lived in a flat with no phone and had to use the phone box on the corner of the next street. Sometimes the queues were quite long – like five people, which is a lot when every one of them is waiting to have a conversation, not to make a quick call. One day, a hedgehog went by, walking along a little track through the grass. No-one but it could have made the track, it was too narrow and precise. This must have been part of its regular route, despite the humans who would regularly stand beside it in silence!
That silver plastic sounds like a possible plot for Doctor Who! But I think I know what you mean now, I have a pen and a camera made of it, but hadn’t realised it was brittle.
Maybe the hedgehog kept on coming back to make a phone call but saw the queue and changed its mind…
Best wishes 🙂