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

In uk.transport.london message OrednRLhq4P_LAzLnZ2dnUU78e-
, Sat, 9 Jan 2016 19:18:26,
posted:

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

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.

Yes. Possibly my friend dwelt in what had in earlier days been the
corresponding Fellow's Butler's Pantry.

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 (forget the subject), got a
life fellowship and didn't publish the rest, as I recall.

Yes, Mr.Simpson. The rest of what you put there generally agrees with
what I recall of what my illustrious friend said.

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.

I have seniority over you; and our periods in residence did not overlap.
But I recall nothing special about the Cambridge mains voltage, in
college, labs, Eden Street, or Lensfield Road; and I was raised, from
the time of significant sentience, in "240V" areas.

I had a set in Whewell's Court in my first year with no bedroom heating, a
British barbarity my parents refused to concede to. So I had to have heating
in my bedroom to make it habitable. The college then told me the voltage was
only 210 and that I could only use one bar of a two-bar electric fire
because the staircase wiring wasn't rated for more. That meant I only got
about three quarters of a kilowatt in effect. I had to rely on leaving the
sitting room gas fire on all night and the interconnecting door open, as
well as extra blankets. Ugh!

Of course students today have central heating and other accoutrements like
sanitation that we were denied!

If you weren't on the margins of your requirements like I describe above you
probably wouldn't have noticed the voltage difference. At least some of
those locations definitely were on 210v until the late 1960s. I didn't
notice the voltage difference from when we still had 210v in Putney. Light
bulbs were different though. I remember finding some 210v ones on sale in
Fulham years after Putney, just across the river, had been converted.

--
Colin Rosenstiel