These were used in the T-class submarine (RN) from 1935 to 1942 for battery service disconnects. Tell them to check records from around 1930-32 for the contract specifications to supply to the RN.
Old style telephone exchanges ran on 50Vdc and used enormous lead-acid batteries and huge copper bus bars (many thousands of amps) to supply all those 'clockwork' switches around the building. This switch might have been from a big exchange that got modernised. I heard of a fork-lift truck that ran into a pair of 50V exchange bus bars, they just quietly melted the side off the fork lift without dipping below 45V.
That's where my thoughts went when I saw 50vdc - wooden case doesn't scream submarine use to me. But where there ever Strowger exchanges where max rated power use was in the megawatt area?
It does sound a lot when you put it like that! I do recall seeing the big diesel gen-sets and lead-acid batteries, and proper fuses and breakers at the rack level, but I never saw the beautifully boxed units shown in the video. Perhaps you don't need protection (for the supply) if any 'fault' will melt and drop off clear of the conductors!
The internals on that thing are a thing of beauty. Please don't destroy it or scrap it for no good reason. It made me cringe just watching you making it arc repeatedly like that. It's a museum quality piece and should be saved.
+theslimeylimey I felt the same way!. Photon should put it back together and ship it back to the manufacturer! They might send him some goodies in return!
+Phil Grindle 1. He already said that he contacted the manufacturer and they didn't know anything about it. So, if the company doesn't even care, why should he? 2. I'm pretty sure that this is as good as any views on the mechanical workings--so any museum that wants to make a replica, can. Put non-working things in boxes to let people look at. Play with working stuff.
+gregistopal you put this in a box and let people gawk at it and maybe 100 people a year would like it enough to really be impressed... you put it on here and all... well most... of his subs are thrilled to bits to see it working and sparking. you tell me what is better: something being used and appreciated or unused and sat in a box so bored kids and impatient adults can glance at it.
This is the pinnacle of "they don't make them like that anymore." You are definitely going to win any "my breaker box is bigger then your breaker box" arguments!
Hadoc Haddockson and beer used to be stored, for long terms, in underground catacombs, just like wines and other spirits... its supposed to be kept cold, or it goes green.
wow, what an amazing piece of equipment, it was great to see how it was put together and how it worked. It was in such good condition, that it should be on display at a museum , please don't destroy this one :) To be honest, I'm surprised the company who manufactured it didn't ask if they could have it, as they had no record of it, a lovely piece of company history.
As someone who works on a submarine with High volts DC, This was so amazing to see. I always think about how much fun you'd have with our battery and motor-generator sets.
It's ex G.P.O. from an old Strowger telephone exchange. The 50v. rating gives it away. All " up and round" exchanges ran mostly on 50v. batteries. Each cell had a volume of around 1 cub. yard. The floor area of both batteries was about that of your average semi-detached house and could run a 10,000 line exchange for 24 hours. Later versions of your breaker had a little carbon pad on the anti-arc bit, and an air-blast to blow the arc out. The power room in Monarch exchange in the City of London used to have 3 motor generator sets just like the ones in "The Empire Strikes Back", and an Ebonite control panel covered in great big switches and dials.You could be right about it being out of a sub, but I'm betting on a 1930s pre-2000 type exchange.Thanks for all the vids, IAB.
+Ian Baxter Just Imagine the SIZE of the Buzz Bars or power cabling coming out of that unit. Makes you wonder what it would take to trip it !! ;-) -Fred
+Fred Flintstone Imagine dozens of metres of solid copper bars 2x20 cm cross section, sometimes in runs of 2 or 3 multipled together. Imagine hundreds of metres of smaller bars like the ones on our breaker, protected by cartridge fuses as big as baked bean tins, with a black powder charge in them to tell you it'd blown. Think of the scrap BT got out of that lot when they went digital. How do you blow one? Just drop a double ended spanner on a bar. You'll get 2 single ended spanners and the sack! Incidentally, the huge size of the bars was more to limit voltage drop than to withstand high currents, which would be around 100 to 1000 Amps. Individual line circuits used to be regulated to a couple of Amps by a variation on the old Edison carbon filament lamp.These made a lovely bang when sent through the pneumatic tube system in the Central Telegraph Office at St. Pauls.
That is what I call switchgear! What an engineering thing of beauty. So well thought out and so much current! Don’t make em like that any more. Thanks for sharing!
That switch is amazing. I mean wow thanks to the sender. I haven't seen anything like that. Watching again. Excellent video y'all. Love it. Steven NC USA
Oh look how beautifully it is made. And these copper contacts! Not only providing plenty of mating surface but also perfectly self-cleaning. Cheapo manufacturers don't make things that way these days.
Fascinating peace of equipment (the beer drawer and the breaker of course)! Some nuts and bolts look quite modern for a 100 year old DC breaker, perhaps they might have been changed over the years.
What you have there is a saturable reactor in form of iron core and couple turns of copper that will reduce turn on sparking of the first set of contacts. It wont effect turn off process.
It's already in a museum. It's getting all the respect it deserves by having hundreds of thousand a of people seeing it in operation online, instead of sitting on a pedestal in a museum somewhere doing nothing.
I work on an old cargo ship built during WWII. It's Been updated, and we don't have anything this big DC left, but we do have many smaller DC knife switches in regular use and some smaller breakers still powering some DC systems. Also have all the old timey steam manifold and condenser for winches and accommodation heating fired by two scotch boilers. I'm gonna miss when these old lady's are all gone and you need a computer to fix it.
Most if not all Telephone Exchanges run on 50V DC, and the old Electro-Mechanical type used to draw a lot of amps. The Small-Medium sized one I worked in had a rectifier that could drawn safely 800Amps, Peek 1000Amps @ 50V DC. So a bigger one like London City would diffidently have had 20,000Amp, single operating breaker. -Fred
my boss and one of my colleagues used to work at the factory in castleton before it shut down. our current office is just around the corner from the site. now it's a housing estate (st Martins view)
6:10 or so you say you put it at "full power." What does full power consist of? What is being used to provide the power? It is some sort of DC source, do you have it set at a constant voltage? Is it just shorted out across the terminals of this massive breaker such that the current is only limited by the current limit of the supply (assuming the voltage limit of the supply is lower than the value V/R, where V is the voltage the source is set to and R is the total resistance across the breaker terminals)?
Seriously, I click the like button before I've even finished watching you. No need to know the quality of your content as long as your frying stuff, I'm here buddy!
that arc is barely hurting that switch, it was probably designed to take it, it makes it ugly and you would have to clean the contacts but it would still be fine, but it is like a museum piece and i wouldnt do that with it, its like cold revving a famous racecar from the old days, it just pains us to see abuse to something so old and cool and in such great shape
Yes that's from a world war 1 submarine, I used to have a neighbour when I was a kid that had been in the submarines in world war 1 and world war 2 and had been in 4 different submarines that got destroyed 2 in each of the wars and survived, the old guy was 97 years old when he passed away and that was 20 years ago, he told us a bit about his time in the submarines back then, none of the fancy high tech stuff they have nowadays or fancy air supply systems, things could go wrong quickly without even being attacked. These big old switches have a well made ark quencher mechanism from before they had gas filled or the likes. Great looking back at the older videos.
Stunning piece of equipment, beautifully made, and looks hardly used. Please preserve it. In the early days of electrical power distribution, most of them were DC, and often incompatible voltages, I am just scanning my "Networks of Power" as we speak to see when the last DC network was in London, maybe the 19th century so this is might be a tad late.
+Kosmonooit Most of the power networks were AC by the turn of the century but in London before WWI (1914) there were at least 10 different AC frequencies "and a bewildering assortment of voltages"
Cheers. Hmmm. Looks like a nice conductive metal handle there. Great piece of kit. Love the spreading contacts. Self cleaning by the look of it. Nice. 50V DC could be submarine or perhaps early tram / tube train? New door bell switch? Thanks mate.
Slow make, fast break. you would not be able to close this breaker with any load on it. Stored energy circuit breakers didn't become common until the late 1950's. 4:30 the steel bar assembly is called a blowout coil; this type of design was very common in circuit breakers of this era.
I think i know where this was from I believe this came from a de magnetising station from ww2 this would have been used to pass a current through a wire temporarily fastened to a ship in port to demagnetise the ship so they wouldn’t set off magnetic mines this would have most likely been used to switch the current on and off as a DC current of tens of thousands of amps was needed to demagnetise a ship of large size awesome video by the way amazing to see it still functional
Nice slow speed Mechanical Contactor, as someone pointed out ex-submarine battery switch (slate back?), did'nt have worry about the arc just a simple magnetic blowout coil, upward to a basic asbestos chute (no Arc Splitting) We did fit the later Whipp & Bourne HSCB's, had air puffer to blow the arc and five segment arc chutes, still did manage to destroy one W&B HSCB, luckily the arc didn't travel to the other cubicles. Not like our south of the Thames outstation lost all eight HSCB's, blamed a poor cat(crunchy)and arc travel, each 6'H x2'W x6'D each set to 6,500A (when they go, you've got 2-3 sec to exit or you are cremated along with slate, concrete, iron, steel, copper everything returns to dust) eventually Main Transformer C/T's, or gas sensor trips A/C supply (or the Grid). and very difficult to repaint the interior (yellow).
Dude I’m from the us and grew up messing with electricity but god nothing like this my cousin is an electrical technology engineer and I’m telling you we’re both drooling over this rn
that has to go and keep the variac company just cause its so old dont bust it it may be the last one in existence if the manufacturer doesnt know of them
Looks like it's part of a hard chrome plating system. DC rectifiers for hard chrome go up to around 30K amps up to 12VDC. I have personally repaired units that went up to 16K amps at 12VDC. A breaker like this would likely be used to protect the rectifier diodes in the event of a short. More modern units use SCR chopping to control current flow, older units use different transformer windings with tap switches to control current and voltage. A breaker like this would make sense on an old unit, but the SCR style usually has a current shunt with simple detection circuits to shut off the unit in the event of a short.
"slightly larger" well that escalated quickly. BTW plz take care of that. I simply adore old school technology and electronics components. I love there simplicity and the fact they are designed to handle high voltage.
I have seen very similar ones in the Montreal metro (subway or "tube", if you prefer!) Next time I'm there, I'll try to see who makes them... We are using them to cut/feed the garage tracks... (750VDC, 500Amps)
That belongs in a museum... The kind that would use it not the stick in a glass box and gawp art it kind of museum. The beer barrel is cool but needs to be stocked with proper beer. Nice vid again photon, now pop something with it ;)
Holy ferkin hell Andy. That is an absolute beast of a breaker. I have a feeling the manufacturer knew everything about that breaker, but with it being of military origin, kept schtum. Glad you are back making vids after that nasty health scare early in the year. Any updates on how Ash is going on?
+craigybus1 He is in the comments and he has his own channel, feel free to contact him directly yourself, otherwise I've got to give you the info second hand, anyway, I'm sure he will be pleased to hear from you :)
I'd say it's more likely from a telephone exchange than a submarine. 50v DC is standard for telephone systems and large exchanges had lead acid battery backed supplies that delivered thousands of amps. Submarine systems were usually 110v DC.
What a marvellous old piece of kit that is . Very primitive and bulky , but still in working order it seems . Yes should be a museum piece , but who would understand that object ? I certainly don't XD
So what exactly is the purpose of that coil and rod at the top? Is it just a resistor or is the Inductivity of that trying to achieve a lower current gradient (although that would be counter-productive for a switch, wouldn't it?)?
+Maanuueel42 \m/(^_^) The inductor saturates at full current. When the circuit breaks finally, the magnetic field in the inductor collapses, but the voltage on the inductor now is in reverse to the initial current. For a brief time the induced voltage cancels out the arcing voltage. This is enough to help extinguish the generated arc faster. Have you seen a diode across the coil of a relay? Similar idea.
Nice demo , phot, nice to see arc exstigishing using electro magnet set-up?.. my Grandad was made deaf at GEC by his many arc blasting exsperements back in the 1930's !! its great to see this ''museum peice' being tested as aposed to being left in a glass box gathering dust. En
I think the new bar needs to be remotely motorised :D Great to see something like that in action, I thought it may have come from an old theatre at first! Regards, J
If you're comfortable with running mains voltage on that switch the you could totally use it to power all the gear in your lab. You should put the spring-latched lever back on; it sounds so cool when you open and close the switch! "Ka-thunnnnk!"
I love antiques just as much as the next person, but, everyone on here who's bellyaching about "ooooo, don't hurt it" and "don't break it" can stuff it. Mr. Photon can do whatever he wants with it, he owns it, and I'm CERTAIN he's earned it.
Re-wire it and have it on the front door as a doorbell press button. Visitors have to pull the lever to sound the bell.
Green Silver YES!!!
Brilliant fucking idea.
@@frumpycrust how are they a racist?
Just the *clang* of that thing engaging and disengaging would suffice for a doorbell. Haha
@@bignig123 guessing they assume the green frog means racist. Who knows. The human mind is something of a mystery
That breaker is absolutely gorgeous. Seems like something the manufacturer might like to have on display in their lobby or something.
These were used in the T-class submarine (RN) from 1935 to 1942 for battery service disconnects. Tell them to check records from around 1930-32 for the contract specifications to supply to the RN.
my grandma used to work in the factory that produced these, she used to make the contact plate and then moved to work on the control system.
Good work. No wonder it was in an Asbestos lined box. At 20,000 amps the flameout would give you spots in front of your eyes
+K9T ahh, there you are, I'm going to be doing a few vids with the bits you have given me, so a big thank you!
And 3:23 sounded like it could do a Marie Antoinette on your hand!
Old style telephone exchanges ran on 50Vdc and used enormous lead-acid batteries and huge copper bus bars (many thousands of amps) to supply all those 'clockwork' switches around the building. This switch might have been from a big exchange that got modernised. I heard of a fork-lift truck that ran into a pair of 50V exchange bus bars, they just quietly melted the side off the fork lift without dipping below 45V.
That's where my thoughts went when I saw 50vdc - wooden case doesn't scream submarine use to me.
But where there ever Strowger exchanges where max rated power use was in the megawatt area?
It does sound a lot when you put it like that! I do recall seeing the big diesel gen-sets and lead-acid batteries, and proper fuses and breakers at the rack level, but I never saw the beautifully boxed units shown in the video. Perhaps you don't need protection (for the supply) if any 'fault' will melt and drop off clear of the conductors!
Awesome piece of British quality engineering. Love your beer stash in the 44 Gallon drum.
The internals on that thing are a thing of beauty. Please don't destroy it or scrap it for no good reason. It made me cringe just watching you making it arc repeatedly like that. It's a museum quality piece and should be saved.
+theslimeylimey I felt the same way!. Photon should put it back together and ship it back to the manufacturer! They might send him some goodies in return!
exactly!
+Phil Grindle 1. He already said that he contacted the manufacturer and they didn't know anything about it. So, if the company doesn't even care, why should he? 2. I'm pretty sure that this is as good as any views on the mechanical workings--so any museum that wants to make a replica, can.
Put non-working things in boxes to let people look at. Play with working stuff.
+Alexander Borsi museums like origonal things I herd that the hidtorical sociity has a colt peacemaker model number one
+gregistopal you put this in a box and let people gawk at it and maybe 100 people a year would like it enough to really be impressed...
you put it on here and all... well most... of his subs are thrilled to bits to see it working and sparking.
you tell me what is better: something being used and appreciated or unused and sat in a box so bored kids and impatient adults can glance at it.
Now that is a contactor!
Man the cabinet is beautiful. -and the mechanism is only a little dusty?
Lucky, LUCKY BOY!!!
Good to see you again!
This is the pinnacle of "they don't make them like that anymore." You are definitely going to win any "my breaker box is bigger then your breaker box" arguments!
. . . arcing that contact was bad enough - but the warm beer was just too much.
beer is suppose to be warm the fuck is wrong with you?
Hadoc Haddockson nah it oughta be cold warm beer ain't good beer
Ales and beer - just below room temp. He's drinking Stella, which is lager. Lager - cold.
only if you live in 1870's London, and enjoy wallowing in and drinking piss.
Hadoc Haddockson and beer used to be stored, for long terms, in underground catacombs, just like wines and other spirits... its supposed to be kept cold, or it goes green.
wow, what an amazing piece of equipment, it was great to see how it was put together and how it worked. It was in such good condition, that it should be on display at a museum , please don't destroy this one :) To be honest, I'm surprised the company who manufactured it didn't ask if they could have it, as they had no record of it, a lovely piece of company history.
As someone who works on a submarine with High volts DC, This was so amazing to see. I always think about how much fun you'd have with our battery and motor-generator sets.
What a beautiful piece of kit. Keep that safe, you never know it might hold value!
It's ex G.P.O. from an old Strowger telephone exchange. The 50v. rating gives it away. All " up and round" exchanges ran mostly on 50v. batteries. Each cell had a volume of around 1 cub. yard. The floor area of both batteries was about that of your average semi-detached house and could run a 10,000 line exchange for 24 hours. Later versions of your breaker had a little carbon pad on the anti-arc bit, and an air-blast to blow the arc out. The power room in Monarch exchange in the City of London used to have 3 motor generator sets just like the ones in "The Empire Strikes Back", and an Ebonite control panel covered in great big switches and dials.You could be right about it being out of a sub, but I'm betting on a 1930s pre-2000 type exchange.Thanks for all the vids, IAB.
+Ian Baxter Just Imagine the SIZE of the Buzz Bars or power cabling coming out of that unit. Makes you wonder what it would take to trip it !! ;-) -Fred
+Fred Flintstone Imagine dozens of metres of solid copper bars 2x20 cm cross section, sometimes in runs of 2 or 3 multipled together. Imagine hundreds of metres of smaller bars like the ones on our breaker, protected by cartridge fuses as big as baked bean tins, with a black powder charge in them to tell you it'd blown. Think of the scrap BT got out of that lot when they went digital. How do you blow one? Just drop a double ended spanner on a bar. You'll get 2 single ended spanners and the sack! Incidentally, the huge size of the bars was more to limit voltage drop than to withstand high currents, which would be around 100 to 1000 Amps. Individual line circuits used to be regulated to a couple of Amps by a variation on the old Edison carbon filament lamp.These made a lovely bang when sent through the pneumatic tube system in the Central Telegraph Office at St. Pauls.
They really knew what they were doing in those days.
Heavy duty, no fuckin nonsense breaker :-D
That is what I call switchgear! What an engineering thing of beauty. So well thought out and so much current! Don’t make em like that any more. Thanks for sharing!
I like this. It's an appreciation and demonstration of good engineering and not a mindless destruction. Kudos!
It looks like it is made pre WW2, so please do not break it!
+TheErilaz it's a breaker.. you're supposed to break it
+Cooking With Cows badum tsss
+TheErilaz
So cool! Those contacts are neat too, and look brand new!!
He just said it was over 100 years old
***** I can be anything you want me to be, big boy.
got the notification on my phone and got extremely excited
+chilcottjack29 me too
That switch is amazing. I mean wow thanks to the sender. I haven't seen anything like that. Watching again. Excellent video y'all. Love it. Steven NC USA
Photon great video!
What a fantastic piece of hardware! You must save that! That definitely belongs in a museum of some sort!
Oh look how beautifully it is made. And these copper contacts! Not only providing plenty of mating surface but also perfectly self-cleaning. Cheapo manufacturers don't make things that way these days.
That is quite some breaker! Looks in great condition too!
That breaker looks like it's never been used
+TheManLab7 If nothing was broken, then everything else was working. A testament to 100-year old electronics.
+TheManLab7 Hello mate! :)
Quite the arc at 6:13, when you said full power how much was put on that?
Those feathered edge contacts are certainly unique and cool as hell. Never seen anything quite like that.
Absolutely a beauty of a switch. They don't make those things like they used to, and I wish they did still make things like that.
Fascinating peace of equipment (the beer drawer and the breaker of course)!
Some nuts and bolts look quite modern for a 100 year old DC breaker, perhaps they might have been changed over the years.
Ahhh, warm beer and hot DC arcs! Doesn't get any better than that!
What you have there is a saturable reactor in form of iron core and couple turns of copper that will reduce turn on sparking of the first set of contacts. It wont effect turn off process.
+Kizmox That makes more sense. I was wondering why you would want to add inductance to a switch.
Doesnt something like this belong into a museum D:
+Salza
Definitely!
"Just one more time, then I sell it"
*pop*
"Ok, just one more, this will be the last time I swear"
[repeat x100]
+Celestial Archangel Phoenix
MY EYES, THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!
+Salza It belongs in Photoninduction's museum of naughty fun - as a burnt out throphy.
It's already in a museum. It's getting all the respect it deserves by having hundreds of thousand a of people seeing it in operation online, instead of sitting on a pedestal in a museum somewhere doing nothing.
so true!
Now that is a work of art....... If it was in my hands I'd clean it up and gift it back to the makers. As you said they have no idea or records.
I work on an old cargo ship built during WWII. It's Been updated, and we don't have anything this big DC left, but we do have many smaller DC knife switches in regular use and some smaller breakers still powering some DC systems. Also have all the old timey steam manifold and condenser for winches and accommodation heating fired by two scotch boilers. I'm gonna miss when these old lady's are all gone and you need a computer to fix it.
that clunk when he trips it off is THE nicest thing I have heard EVER.
Most if not all Telephone Exchanges run on 50V DC, and the old Electro-Mechanical type used to draw a lot of amps. The Small-Medium sized one I worked in had a rectifier that could drawn safely 800Amps, Peek 1000Amps @ 50V DC. So a bigger one like London City would diffidently have had 20,000Amp, single operating breaker. -Fred
Beautiful switch. So ingenious and aesthetic too. i know form follows function (mostly) but that is SO pretty!
Incredible.... that beast was made to stand the test of time. Could leave that thing for 500 years and it'd still operate like the day it was made.
Damn, what a gorgeous piece of hardware. That case'd make a nice end-table.
my boss and one of my colleagues used to work at the factory in castleton before it shut down. our current office is just around the corner from the site. now it's a housing estate (st Martins view)
6:10 or so you say you put it at "full power."
What does full power consist of? What is being used to provide the power? It is some sort of DC source, do you have it set at a constant voltage?
Is it just shorted out across the terminals of this massive breaker such that the current is only limited by the current limit of the supply (assuming the voltage limit of the supply is lower than the value V/R, where V is the voltage the source is set to and R is the total resistance across the breaker terminals)?
did you not notice the mercury arc rectifiers on his living room shelf? :)
+Zambia95 Full power is the 180 amps from his DC arc welder.
Prehistoricman Do you know the voltage at which those 180 amps are being provided?
***** Not a clue.
+Zambia95 no more than 4kW :(
Hang it on the wall for visitors to play with :)) That chord-like sound when you release it is beautiful, I agree :D
Beautiful piece of equipment. Thanks for documenting it. Hope you didn’t destroy it and it went to a good home.
"AC is really easy, but DC is really tricky" Damn Photo, spitting fire.
Great video!
Seriously, I click the like button before I've even finished watching you. No need to know the quality of your content as long as your frying stuff, I'm here buddy!
Im so glad you finally posted another video, been waiting a long time
Never seen anything like that, very interesting stuff, beefy as hell! Very cool
that arc is barely hurting that switch, it was probably designed to take it, it makes it ugly and you would have to clean the contacts but it would still be fine, but it is like a museum piece and i wouldnt do that with it, its like cold revving a famous racecar from the old days, it just pains us to see abuse to something so old and cool and in such great shape
Yes that's from a world war 1 submarine, I used to have a neighbour when I was a kid that had been in the submarines in world war 1 and world war 2 and had been in 4 different submarines that got destroyed 2 in each of the wars and survived, the old guy was 97 years old when he passed away and that was 20 years ago, he told us a bit about his time in the submarines back then, none of the fancy high tech stuff they have nowadays or fancy air supply systems, things could go wrong quickly without even being attacked.
These big old switches have a well made ark quencher mechanism from before they had gas filled or the likes.
Great looking back at the older videos.
Really impressive switch and what a lovely beer stash you're having there!
Stunning piece of equipment, beautifully made, and looks hardly used. Please preserve it. In the early days of electrical power distribution, most of them were DC, and often incompatible voltages, I am just scanning my "Networks of Power" as we speak to see when the last DC network was in London, maybe the 19th century so this is might be a tad late.
+Kosmonooit Most of the power networks were AC by the turn of the century but in London before WWI (1914) there were at least 10 different AC frequencies "and a bewildering assortment of voltages"
Cheers. Hmmm. Looks like a nice conductive metal handle there. Great piece of kit. Love the spreading contacts. Self cleaning by the look of it. Nice. 50V DC could be submarine or perhaps early tram / tube train? New door bell switch? Thanks mate.
Slow make, fast break. you would not be able to close this breaker with any load on it. Stored energy circuit breakers didn't become common until the late 1950's. 4:30 the steel bar assembly is called a blowout coil; this type of design was very common in circuit breakers of this era.
have you considered a few peltier devices in the shelf for cooled drinks?
Ohh the way the contacts
spread out and clean themselves via operation.
🤤
I actually had a dream about a breaker that size and decided to look up your video. Hope you're doing well.
I don't even think you could even blow that one up.
+TheEPROM9 He will be like "Challenge accepted" xD
+TheEPROM9 He could. not many others could.
fighting words ;-) pretty sure he could muster up enough current to let the smoke out.
I think i know where this was from I believe this came from a de magnetising station from ww2 this would have been used to pass a current through a wire temporarily fastened to a ship in port to demagnetise the ship so they wouldn’t set off magnetic mines this would have most likely been used to switch the current on and off as a DC current of tens of thousands of amps was needed to demagnetise a ship of large size awesome video by the way amazing to see it still functional
Nice piece of history.
i also like the Castrol barrel idea! :)
cheers happy Christmas and a productive new year
Nice slow speed Mechanical Contactor, as someone pointed out ex-submarine battery switch (slate back?), did'nt have worry about the arc just a simple magnetic blowout coil, upward to a basic asbestos chute (no Arc Splitting) We did fit the later Whipp & Bourne HSCB's, had air puffer to blow the arc and five segment arc chutes, still did manage to destroy one W&B HSCB, luckily the arc didn't travel to the other cubicles.
Not like our south of the Thames outstation lost all eight HSCB's, blamed a poor cat(crunchy)and arc travel, each 6'H x2'W x6'D each set to 6,500A (when they go, you've got 2-3 sec to exit or you are cremated along with slate, concrete, iron, steel, copper everything returns to dust) eventually Main Transformer C/T's, or gas sensor trips A/C supply (or the Grid).
and very difficult to repaint the interior (yellow).
Awesome video as always Mr Photon
I read that as 20,000 Amp Breakfast sandwich.
+William Haney that's one spicy sandwich lol.
+William Haney I think something telling you to eat...
I was thinking more along the lines of sandwich in a toaster and the such...
You couldn't get a sandwich like that at burger king
davemaster, your right. You would have to go panini bread cafe in Nashville if you wanted one of those.
I love this channel, electricity and beer. Perfect combo.
i was hurting as you arched it!
This is a pretty awesome video. Huge freaking thing you have there
Dude I’m from the us and grew up messing with electricity but god nothing like this my cousin is an electrical technology engineer and I’m telling you we’re both drooling over this rn
that has to go and keep the variac company just cause its so old dont bust it it may be the last one in existence if the manufacturer doesnt know of them
Impressive bit of kit. I like that beer storage too haha.
Looks like it's part of a hard chrome plating system. DC rectifiers for hard chrome go up to around 30K amps up to 12VDC. I have personally repaired units that went up to 16K amps at 12VDC. A breaker like this would likely be used to protect the rectifier diodes in the event of a short. More modern units use SCR chopping to control current flow, older units use different transformer windings with tap switches to control current and voltage. A breaker like this would make sense on an old unit, but the SCR style usually has a current shunt with simple detection circuits to shut off the unit in the event of a short.
+Calius Optimus A side note......10K amp shorts are VIOLENT. And beautiful :-D
"slightly larger" well that escalated quickly.
BTW plz take care of that. I simply adore old school technology and electronics components. I love there simplicity and the fact they are designed to handle high voltage.
This music and style of yours into really reminds me of old playstation games :D
That's a brilliant bit of kit, considering its over one hundred years old. It's definitely made to last.
It's a contact and arc chute in one. Good design. Resists pitting.
F*ckin gnarly old stuff mate, good to see ya back
Beautiful piece of engineering. Great video.
I have seen very similar ones in the Montreal metro (subway or "tube", if you prefer!) Next time I'm there, I'll try to see who makes them... We are using them to cut/feed the garage tracks... (750VDC, 500Amps)
looking back at old technology... wonderful
That belongs in a museum... The kind that would use it not the stick in a glass box and gawp art it kind of museum. The beer barrel is cool but needs to be stocked with proper beer. Nice vid again photon, now pop something with it ;)
No, It belongs in my house as the main switch. (It wouldn't be worked hard, i'd just be used as a nice switch.)
didn't cities and houses run dc power, before Nickola Tesla?
The copper contacts shaped like an open book is fascinating
Holy ferkin hell Andy. That is an absolute beast of a breaker. I have a feeling the manufacturer knew everything about that breaker, but with it being of military origin, kept schtum. Glad you are back making vids after that nasty health scare early in the year. Any updates on how Ash is going on?
+craigybus1 He is in the comments and he has his own channel, feel free to contact him directly yourself, otherwise I've got to give you the info second hand, anyway, I'm sure he will be pleased to hear from you :)
end of the month that switch would have brought something like Frankenstien to life lol.nice choice of beer there.
I'd say it's more likely from a telephone exchange than a submarine. 50v DC is standard for telephone systems and large exchanges had lead acid battery backed supplies that delivered thousands of amps. Submarine systems were usually 110v DC.
What a marvellous old piece of kit that is . Very primitive and bulky , but still in working order it seems . Yes should be a museum piece , but who would understand that object ? I certainly don't XD
The oversize Wylex prongs on the back are hilarious XD
So what exactly is the purpose of that coil and rod at the top? Is it just a resistor or is the Inductivity of that trying to achieve a lower current gradient (although that would be counter-productive for a switch, wouldn't it?)?
+Maanuueel42 \m/(^_^) I have the same question.
+Maanuueel42 \m/(^_^) The inductor saturates at full current. When the circuit breaks finally, the magnetic field in the inductor collapses, but the voltage on the inductor now is in reverse to the initial current. For a brief time the induced voltage cancels out the arcing voltage. This is enough to help extinguish the generated arc faster. Have you seen a diode across the coil of a relay? Similar idea.
Jammit Timmaj Oooh, that makes sense..
Thanks! :)
+Jammit Timmaj I was wondering too, thanks for the explanation.
What a guy - he even has a beer with us after the video! :)
Bloody good stuff. What a piece of kit and history. Whats next for it i wounder !!!
Gorgeous piece of kit. Left over from when England was a real Country; instead of a tourist theme park.
Brexit will Make England Great Again
Likely used for battery supply for a large telephone exchange. The 50 volt rating is a key indicator.
Warm beer? weird.
Lovely piece of kit, so awesome.
Nice demo , phot, nice to see arc exstigishing using electro magnet set-up?.. my Grandad was made deaf at GEC by his many arc blasting exsperements back in the 1930's !! its great to see this ''museum peice' being tested as aposed to being left in a glass box gathering dust. En
Got to love that beer closet.
I think the new bar needs to be remotely motorised :D
Great to see something like that in action, I thought it may have come from an old theatre at first!
Regards, J
Loved it all. Apart from the room temp beer, dude!
Gives me a whole new meaning of breaker.
If you're comfortable with running mains voltage on that switch the you could totally use it to power all the gear in your lab. You should put the spring-latched lever back on; it sounds so cool when you open and close the switch! "Ka-thunnnnk!"
I love antiques just as much as the next person, but, everyone on here who's bellyaching about "ooooo, don't hurt it" and "don't break it" can stuff it. Mr. Photon can do whatever he wants with it, he owns it, and I'm CERTAIN he's earned it.