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| Authored by: qubit on Wednesday, May 16 2012 @ 10:31 PM EDT |
You've got to explain that one.
Here in the U.S. I've worked with
wiring that dates back to 1912, and that at
least had screw-in glass fuses. What
is fuse wire? How old is that?
I didn't know, either, so I
poked around. Wikipedia has a picture --
it's basically what you would expect: A bit of tiny wire that probably
melts/burns up when you run too many electrons through it too quickly :-)
As
for the described problem, replacing a fuse with a chunk of thick wire is one
way to cut a fuse box out of the circuit, but not the most common -- leastwise
not in the US. The way I've often heard about is that the "old" screw-in fuses
(okay, old is relative -- I've seen them in apartments as recently as the 1990s)
could be "replaced" with a penny.
The screw-in fuses in the US use an E26 socket -- which most
people know better as a standard-size screw-in light bulb socket! These sockets
are (wait for it) 26mm in diameter (okay, yeah, anticlimactic..). A penny,
according to The
Wiki of Knowledge has a diameter of 19.05 mm. They are made to be the same
diameter as your belly button. Wait! No! don't try it out... I'm not
responsible if it gets stuck in there!
Thankfully for the stupid people out
there, the penny can just be placed into the socket and be made to complete the
connection. Apparently some later fuse boxes had mechanisms to thwart most of
these inappropriate hacks, but I'm certain that people will find other ways to
electrocute themselves (or their neighbors) even with GFCI outlets and circuit
breakers. Huzzah, us. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 16 2012 @ 11:28 PM EDT |
Fuse wire is still sold. It isn't much used inside houses, though. Your
friendly electrical utility uses fuse wire in heavy-duty circuits, like the high
voltage branch circuit on the pole going down the street. Just this Monday a
fuse blew on a pole at the corner of my street. It sounded like a cannon going
off. I immediately called the power company to report the outage, especially
since it affected the power to my house. :)
-BillR[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Doghouse on Thursday, May 17 2012 @ 06:14 AM EDT |
It's effectively a glass fuse without the glass: a length of
appropriate-gauge conductive wire running through a ceramic protector in a
removable plug. There's a video of a guy demonstrating how to rewire such a fuse
here.
They're
about as safe as any other wired electrical device of the period, simple enough
for anyone who can change a plug to repair a blown fuse without difficulty (if a
bit fiddly), and not as prone to running out of fuses as ones needing cartridges
(one card of fuse wire is more than the average householder would be likely to
need in a normal lifetime).
Wired fuse boxes were still being routinely
fitted on houses built in the UK until at least the 1970's, and possibly later.
My house, built 1977 or thereabouts, still has one (which I keep meaning to get
replaced with an MCB device, but haven't gotten around to yet. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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