In article id,
lid (Dr J R Stockton) wrote:

In uk.transport.london message ReGdndQvJ72aCBLLnZ2dnUU78W-
, Fri, 8 Jan 2016 04:52:55,
posted:

In article , (Clive
Page) wrote:

On 07/01/2016 23:45, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

A select portion of central Cambridge still used 110 volt
(approximately) lighting in about 1965. I can, if desired, explain
why.

That would be interesting to know.

I went to a shop in Cambridge in 1965 to buy a kettle. I was
surprised to be asked if I wanted it 110 or 230 volt. There must
have been a lot of domestic appliances scrapped at the time of
conversion.

Yet I heard none of this when I arrived in central Cambridge in 1968.

I tried to email John for more details (removing the ".invalid") but it
bounced.

The address that you used in May 2011 still works, but the one implied
in the signature below is possibly preferable.

Found it now. You hid that well nearly 5 years later.

In, as I unreliably recall, the mid-1920s, Trinity College Cambridge
elected a Fellow, Mr S (no known relation); and in those days College
Fellowships were for life (the practice ceased soon after). He took up
residence in a suite in one of the first staircases on the left as you
enter Trinity, and remained there quietly for decades; well into, or
past, the 1960s. When Trinity first adopted the general use of
electricity, I suppose before WWII, it acquired a 110 volt supply.

It would have been a fellow's set.

A friend of mine lived, as an undergraduate, in a set on that small
staircase in the early/mid 1960s. His rooms may well have been the only
other set on that staircase. He has told me that his rooms were
supplied with 110 volt lighting, and that they were equipped with a
small 110 to 240 volt transformer for his other minor needs.

The reason for the transformer being needed, he has told me, was that,
when that part of Cambridge City was changed from 110 volts to 240
volts, the College chose not to disturb Mr S's electrical arrangements,
and so had had fitted, where the supply entered the staircase, a 240
volt to 110 volt transformer, so that the entire small staircase was
supplied at 110 volts.

I have a feeling the fellow you're referring to was named Simpson. He wrote
the first volume of his academic work (for get the subject), got a life
fellowship and didn't publish the rest, as I recall. He also used to annoy
the gardeners by tending the Great Court window boxes not to their liking.

later A Google search directs me to
http://trinitycollegechapel.com/abou...asses/simpson/. This
(written by the eminent, at least to himself, historian, Peter Laslett)
tells us his name was Frederick Arthur Simpson and some of my recollections
above are not quite right. It seems he died in 1974 which is not very long
after I graduated.

The public supply voltage was still 210 (nominal, actually 205) when I came
up in 1968 and for the next year or two although it had changed by 1972.
I've not heard any story of a local 110v supply or whether it survived the
uprating of the public supply voltage.

--
Colin Rosenstiel