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Well, I'm of 20th C. origin—not 19th—and the first electrical things I played with as a young kid were electric bells, buzzers, batteries, flashlight globes and

Well, I'm of 20th C. origin—not 19th—and the first electrical things I played with as a young kid were electric bells, buzzers, batteries, flashlight globes and reels of bell wire—lots and lots of it. (Experimenting with such items wasn't an unfashionable activity when I was a kid.) Bell wire, which usually came in the form of two single-stranded copper wires twisted loosely together and insulated in red and white PVC plastic, was installed under the house, in ceilings, in wall cavities and elsewhere by yours truly to enable us perform all sorts of electrical tasks—door bells, for mother to signal us to come to dinner, etc. Isn't that standard kids' stuff anymore? The thought of an electrician being called to fix these Rube Goldberg/Heath Robinson-type installations would have been preposterous. If No.-1 son wasn't about say to change a battery then my parents would do it themselves.

whimsicalism 4y ago
> Well, I'm of 20th C. origin—not 19th This already is a massive difference. Large majority of children in the 19th century did not have any access to electricity, let alone knowing how to fashion an electric bell.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Yes, there's a huge difference between the amount of information that 19th C. and 20th C. kids had access to, but then this is a broad generalization and it requires qualification. In fact I'd argue that some 19th C. kids (albeit few in relative numbers) would have had access to more information than many of their 20th C. counterparts. Broadly, the reason for why some 20th C. kids would have had access to less information is that they were more protected from dangers than those in 19th C. (and in some ways that's problematic when it comes to learning). Also, clearly, the types of information available in each era would have been different—and this difference would have been accentuated depending on which part of each century we're referring to. The 19th C.—being the height of the Industrial Revolution—change came thick and fast, so it's almost superfluous to say kids' knowledge of electricity at the turn of the 20th C. would have been much greater than at the beginning of the 19th however this difference wasn't anywhere near as stark at other times throughout the 19th C. This is best illustrated by example and for that I'll use a book published in 1858 by Elisha Noyce titled The Boys Book of Industrial Information. https://archive.org/details/boysbookofindust00noyc https://archive.org/details/boysbookofindust00noyc So by 1858 enough information was known about electricity to include technical aspects about it including its industrial applications such as electroplating, p129, and the telegraph, pp273-280 in a kids' book. I'd also posit that some 20 years later (by say 1880) with the coming together of electrical engineering—telephone, electric motors, generators, transatlantic cables, theory by Maxwell, Wheatstone et al, that much more information about the subject would have been available to kids. Noyce's book was a true eye-opener to me when I came across it some two to three decades ago, so much so that I now truly regret not having a copy of it as a kid. I know I would have gained a great amount of useful knowledge from it despite the fact that it was published a century before my time. Whilst I had access to more modern texts they didn't provide the information in such a useful and meaningful way. Moreover, much of that information is still very relevant and valuable today. For instance, I refer you to pp57-58 on the dangers of lead and lead poisoning, therein Noyce issues a stark warning especially so with respect to white lead as used in paint. (This advice would have been invaluable to boys who would have gone into industries where they'd be exposed to such dangers. It also infomes us that knowledge of and concerns about bad and dangerous working conditions of the era may have been better understood at the time than some modern history books would have us believe.) Keep in mind this warning was in a book for boys written to provide them with practical and useful information—not published in some erudite scientific publication. The fact that by 1858 the dangers of lead had filtered down not only to ordinary people but also to their kids makes the failure of governments and those knowledgeable of the facts to act in a decisive way over the forthcoming century all the more tragic (when I first read Noyce's warning I was quite horrified that so little action had been taken until recent decades). As you see, with actual information to hand things seem a little more nuanced.
eastbound 4y ago
Living in Europe, I’m one of the rare millionaires so I have a house, 150m2 (on the Côte d’Azur, I admit it’s expensive), but even for me, thinking of “a bell for mother to signal us to come to dinner” is the thing that belong to the times when energy was unlimited, and therefore house sizes and taxes on inhabitable square meters. It’s not that we do have bells here, but we don’t have the square meters anymore.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  "...but we don’t have the square meters anymore." I well understand what you say having lived in a crowded part of Europe for a time. It made me all the more appreciative of the fact that I grew up in a big home with a large front and back yard and that our house was only a few hundred metres from bushland. Nevertheless, in some ways I envy you living in the Côte d’Azur. That is one of my most favorite parts of Europe.
- eru 4y ago
  If you have more than one story, a bell can still make some sense. And of course, the bell doesn't have to make much sense. It doesn't have to work better than yelling, if the kids just like having it around.
- tremon 4y ago
  "a bell for mother to signal us to come to dinner” is the thing that belong to the times when energy was unlimited Well, practically so. My mother had a massive copper (I think) cowbell at the bottom of the stairs to signal us. All it required was the muscle energy to give the 2-kilogram monstrosity a little shake.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    Yeah, my mother also had a hand bell as a backup to the pushbutton system. It was of some 3-4 inches in diameter with a black handle that had been turned to give it an ornate pattern. The bell was attached by string to a hook on a shelf in the kitchen so it wouldn't go walkabout. It worked marvelously and almost always the dog would arrive there first (it was usually my job to feed the dog before our food was served).
namrog84 4y ago
I was born in 84. And in the 90s I knew this 1 kid who told me on his 11th birthday his dad would raise his bicycle seat. I was super confused as that an easy thing to do(loosen a bolt, adjust height and tighten the bolt). Turns out lots of parents don't allow their kids to touch their tools or tinker or do anything like that. I was very fortunate that my parents encouraged me to do such things. E.g. take apart things to put them together but it doesn't surprise me why lots of people have all the creativity and curiosity purged from them from an early age.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  "...take apart things to put them together but it doesn't surprise me why lots of people have all the creativity and curiosity purged from them from an early age." You're right, encouraging kids to explore the world at an early age is all important for their development. As a kid I was a past master at pulling all sorts of things apart and somewhat less successful at putting them back together again. And from that I learned a great amount about how stuff worked ('hands-on' at a very young age I reckon is essential to get the feel and measure of stuff). My parents never discouraged me from playing with all sorts of rather strange things—except perhaps in my preschool years when I started rummaging around amongst the inner workings of our large console radio set in the lounge room. At the age of about four or five my mother took exception after I discovered that touching the top cap [aka grid-1] of one of its valves (tubes) caused a very loud humming noise (she came bounding into the room somewhat alarmed to find No.-1 son arm-deep amongst the electrics). By that age I'd already become an inveterate collector of junk—everything from screws, nuts and bolts to discarded power pole wire and insulators. Once I found an old transformer out of a radio set that had green silk-like insulation on its windings (which I found fascinating) and in the evening when my parents told me to stop playing with it I disobeyed the order and hid it in my bed (I know, a very strange kid). Now, you can imagine the furore and trouble I was in when this large metal object came crashing to the floor in the early hours of the morning waking up the whole household. I cannot envisage how horrible my childhood would have been had my parents forbidden me from following my natural instincts (as strange and as odd as they may have seemed). I'm sure many other parents would have been much less tolerant of my strange predilections. In hindsight, I reckon my only saving grace was that my father was an engineer.

whimsicalism 4y ago

> Well, I'm of 20th C. origin—not 19th This already is a massive difference. Large majority of children in the 19th century did not have any access to electricity, let alone knowing how to fashion an electric bell.

hilbert42 4y ago
Yes, there's a huge difference between the amount of information that 19th C. and 20th C. kids had access to, but then this is a broad generalization and it requires qualification. In fact I'd argue that some 19th C. kids (albeit few in relative numbers) would have had access to more information than many of their 20th C. counterparts. Broadly, the reason for why some 20th C. kids would have had access to less information is that they were more protected from dangers than those in 19th C. (and in some ways that's problematic when it comes to learning). Also, clearly, the types of information available in each era would have been different—and this difference would have been accentuated depending on which part of each century we're referring to. The 19th C.—being the height of the Industrial Revolution—change came thick and fast, so it's almost superfluous to say kids' knowledge of electricity at the turn of the 20th C. would have been much greater than at the beginning of the 19th however this difference wasn't anywhere near as stark at other times throughout the 19th C. This is best illustrated by example and for that I'll use a book published in 1858 by Elisha Noyce titled The Boys Book of Industrial Information. https://archive.org/details/boysbookofindust00noyc https://archive.org/details/boysbookofindust00noyc So by 1858 enough information was known about electricity to include technical aspects about it including its industrial applications such as electroplating, p129, and the telegraph, pp273-280 in a kids' book. I'd also posit that some 20 years later (by say 1880) with the coming together of electrical engineering—telephone, electric motors, generators, transatlantic cables, theory by Maxwell, Wheatstone et al, that much more information about the subject would have been available to kids. Noyce's book was a true eye-opener to me when I came across it some two to three decades ago, so much so that I now truly regret not having a copy of it as a kid. I know I would have gained a great amount of useful knowledge from it despite the fact that it was published a century before my time. Whilst I had access to more modern texts they didn't provide the information in such a useful and meaningful way. Moreover, much of that information is still very relevant and valuable today. For instance, I refer you to pp57-58 on the dangers of lead and lead poisoning, therein Noyce issues a stark warning especially so with respect to white lead as used in paint. (This advice would have been invaluable to boys who would have gone into industries where they'd be exposed to such dangers. It also infomes us that knowledge of and concerns about bad and dangerous working conditions of the era may have been better understood at the time than some modern history books would have us believe.) Keep in mind this warning was in a book for boys written to provide them with practical and useful information—not published in some erudite scientific publication. The fact that by 1858 the dangers of lead had filtered down not only to ordinary people but also to their kids makes the failure of governments and those knowledgeable of the facts to act in a decisive way over the forthcoming century all the more tragic (when I first read Noyce's warning I was quite horrified that so little action had been taken until recent decades). As you see, with actual information to hand things seem a little more nuanced.

eastbound 4y ago

Living in Europe, I’m one of the rare millionaires so I have a house, 150m2 (on the Côte d’Azur, I admit it’s expensive), but even for me, thinking of “a bell for mother to signal us to come to dinner” is the thing that belong to the times when energy was unlimited, and therefore house sizes and taxes on inhabitable square meters. It’s not that we do have bells here, but we don’t have the square meters anymore.

hilbert42 4y ago
"...but we don’t have the square meters anymore." I well understand what you say having lived in a crowded part of Europe for a time. It made me all the more appreciative of the fact that I grew up in a big home with a large front and back yard and that our house was only a few hundred metres from bushland. Nevertheless, in some ways I envy you living in the Côte d’Azur. That is one of my most favorite parts of Europe.
eru 4y ago
If you have more than one story, a bell can still make some sense. And of course, the bell doesn't have to make much sense. It doesn't have to work better than yelling, if the kids just like having it around.
tremon 4y ago
"a bell for mother to signal us to come to dinner” is the thing that belong to the times when energy was unlimited Well, practically so. My mother had a massive copper (I think) cowbell at the bottom of the stairs to signal us. All it required was the muscle energy to give the 2-kilogram monstrosity a little shake.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Yeah, my mother also had a hand bell as a backup to the pushbutton system. It was of some 3-4 inches in diameter with a black handle that had been turned to give it an ornate pattern. The bell was attached by string to a hook on a shelf in the kitchen so it wouldn't go walkabout. It worked marvelously and almost always the dog would arrive there first (it was usually my job to feed the dog before our food was served).

namrog84 4y ago

I was born in 84. And in the 90s I knew this 1 kid who told me on his 11th birthday his dad would raise his bicycle seat. I was super confused as that an easy thing to do(loosen a bolt, adjust height and tighten the bolt). Turns out lots of parents don't allow their kids to touch their tools or tinker or do anything like that. I was very fortunate that my parents encouraged me to do such things. E.g. take apart things to put them together but it doesn't surprise me why lots of people have all the creativity and curiosity purged from them from an early age.

hilbert42 4y ago
"...take apart things to put them together but it doesn't surprise me why lots of people have all the creativity and curiosity purged from them from an early age." You're right, encouraging kids to explore the world at an early age is all important for their development. As a kid I was a past master at pulling all sorts of things apart and somewhat less successful at putting them back together again. And from that I learned a great amount about how stuff worked ('hands-on' at a very young age I reckon is essential to get the feel and measure of stuff). My parents never discouraged me from playing with all sorts of rather strange things—except perhaps in my preschool years when I started rummaging around amongst the inner workings of our large console radio set in the lounge room. At the age of about four or five my mother took exception after I discovered that touching the top cap [aka grid-1] of one of its valves (tubes) caused a very loud humming noise (she came bounding into the room somewhat alarmed to find No.-1 son arm-deep amongst the electrics). By that age I'd already become an inveterate collector of junk—everything from screws, nuts and bolts to discarded power pole wire and insulators. Once I found an old transformer out of a radio set that had green silk-like insulation on its windings (which I found fascinating) and in the evening when my parents told me to stop playing with it I disobeyed the order and hid it in my bed (I know, a very strange kid). Now, you can imagine the furore and trouble I was in when this large metal object came crashing to the floor in the early hours of the morning waking up the whole household. I cannot envisage how horrible my childhood would have been had my parents forbidden me from following my natural instincts (as strange and as odd as they may have seemed). I'm sure many other parents would have been much less tolerant of my strange predilections. In hindsight, I reckon my only saving grace was that my father was an engineer.