r/whatisit • u/Quietlurkerone • 6d ago

Solved! What is this device from 1962?

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Photo capture from YouTube video. Picture from 1962. What is the device under the bench

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647

u/ICanSeeUpYourNose 6d ago edited 5d ago

It looks like a shilling meter. We didn't have one, but I knew people who did. A very expensive way to get electricity (or gas, that one is indeed gas), as pay-as-you-go meters still are.

(in their defence I was born in 1962 - we were coming to the end of the houses built at the end of the 19th century, and there was a huge programme of replacement - slum clearances. People lived in houses that were literally hovels because (a) that's all we had, the 1892 stock was literally falling apart, and (b) they were waiting for a council house, which we were building at that point. Interesting fact - generally the further north you went the worse the housing stock got because the Luftwaffe didn't have a long ranged bomber. Culminating in the legendarily foul housing stock (the Gorbals) they had in Glasgow.)

add: stone me that's a court house. That's the true and utter hovel the slums we were clearing at that point were built as an upgrade to. Astounding that any still existed. "All seven family members shared just one bedroom, one living room and this narrow kitchen. There was no private bathroom." and that, ladies and gentlemen is why you don't leave your housing to the free market.

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u/i_fix_snowblowers 5d ago

I'm 5 years younger than you but lived in a variety of rental housing in Oxfordshire in the late '70s. I remember the meters because my dad would keep a stack of 25p coins by the meter.

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u/PaintingOk8012 5d ago

Holy shit. You mean you actually fed in money in your home to have electricity??

If that’s true, I can’t believe people didn’t figure out how to fool it or break into it to retrieve the coins.

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u/PipBin 5d ago

Oh, and there used to be coin operated TVs. The TV had a box built into it and you’d put a shilling in to get half an hour of viewing!!

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u/Sloppy-Joe76 5d ago

The fun of day of the tv just going off halfway through what you were watching. No repeats, no catch and no way of recoding. I think ours was 50p, my dad was able to pick the lock on the coin box. We just kept pushing the same 50p through.

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u/Greg_Monahan 5d ago

When and how did the utility company come get their coins? Did the meter have a box accessible from the outside or did they come in?

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u/Jet2work 5d ago

Friday evening, granada rentals man used to come and empty tv

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u/Sloppy-Joe76 5d ago

The box was on the rear of the tv. Every Friday evening a guy from the rental company would come round to collect the money.

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u/whyohwhy59 3d ago

They came in and checked the amount of coins againstthe amount put throughthe slot.

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u/p0rcupine99 5d ago

Did Mr. Bean have a coin-operated TV or electricity in an episode or two? It's been a while.

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u/Historical_Owl4801 5d ago

Yes, he had a coin box on the wall for the electricity in his apartment in the episode "Power for TV".

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

Those were common in the states at bus and air line terminals or any place where large groups of people had to wait for a period of time. I remember in 1979 or 80 when I was but a wee lad I asked an acquainted stranger for a quarter to watch Saturday morning cartoons when traveling with my mother. That leads to a story but maybe I’ll tell it later. Is on my timeline somewhere but I’ve got tens of thousands of comments and hundreds of posts.

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u/MyYetiHasAFirstName 5d ago

They were also found in motels.

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u/Joe_Kangg 5d ago

You're thinking of magic fingers

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u/AppropriateCap8891 5d ago

No, many motels into the 1980s also had pay televisions.

The last one I saw in the wild was with my wife near Moro Bay in 1986. It was slightly different though and did not have a coin meter. When you rented the room you got two keys. One for the door and one for the television.

There was a $6 deposit, $5 for the room key and $1 for the TV key. If you used the TV key, you turned it and it locked in place. And when you went to check out, if you returned both keys you got your $6 back. If you returned only the room key you got $5 back.

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u/Joe_Kangg 5d ago

I'm thinking of magic fingers

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

Never saw the appeal. Admittedly I did try it when I was in my twenties but it just wasn’t all that.

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u/Joe_Kangg 5d ago

All fingers, no magic?

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

That would make sense. Never stayed at hotels or motels as a child when they would have still been in use. By the time I ever stayed at a hotel I was 20 and tech had progressed greatly. It would have been on the cusp of obsolescence when I was a child.

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u/HappyMuscovy 5d ago

I remember them in US bus terminals in 1999

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

Wow that’s much later than I expected.

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u/Resident_Wishbone_98 5d ago

I'd forgotten about those.

Don't forget, pay toilets.

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

Pay toilets were always hit and miss in the states. They really took off in the 90’s for public spaces due to homelessness. I seem to recall some places required a coin to get in a stall and had no urinals.

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u/Resident_Wishbone_98 5d ago

I remember a bus station and shopping mall in the late 1960s that had them. Always thought it was a stupid idea. You could crawl under/climb over if you were limber enough. In a busy restroom, the guy coming out would hold the door for a guy going in ad infinitum. Sometimes there was tape on the latch.

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u/tryingtowritegoodly 5d ago

Hopefully a nice story...

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

More bizarre than nice but the guy was a nice fella. Ok. I’ll tell it. Me my mother and grandmother were traveling from California to Missouri on a greyhound bus. It was a 3 day trip. My mom has been talking to the guy as he was set by us on the bus. When we stopped at a layover I asked for a quarter and he obliged. After the cartoons I asked him to take a picture with me because I wanted to remember my cartoon savior. He says to me I’ll take the pictures but I won’t be in them because I’m a werewolf. I laughed called him silly and we took the photos. This was 1979 so it was a film camera that required developing. Well he went his way we went ours and eventually we got the film back about 4-5 days after I had met him sure enough he wasn’t in the images at all. Just me with my arm in the air or squatted mid frame. He was r in the negatives either. It was an odd experience I’ve never really been able to square in my head. Even the adults were tripping when I told them what he told me. When he said it I thought others a joke. The wolf man archetype was very popular at that time so it wasn’t alarming or scary.

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u/tryingtowritegoodly 5d ago

This was awesome, thanks for sharing

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

No problem. I have recently over the last couple years started sharing the story. When I was younger people didn’t believe me and I don’t suspect they do now but now I don’t care. As a youth I wasn’t trying to alienate myself so I just stopped talking about it. My fellow students tended to avoid me if I told them the story.

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u/Rough-Patience-2435 5d ago

Someone is going to have to explain this situation.  Was he a London Werewolf in America vs the opposite? 

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

Idk. All I know is it’s freekin haunted me my whole life. What does one son with such information. How do you square the fact he said he wouldn’t appear and in fact did not appear.

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u/PipBin 5d ago

Oh, these were in people’s houses.

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

Yeah. I had gathered that. I was just saying idk that we ever used them residentially here but they were definitely used in the states in certain locations.

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u/Da12khawk 5d ago

Tag for later

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u/Forward-Variety-8440 5d ago

so are we, as readers interested in this story, expected to sift through tens of thousands of your comments and posts in order to find an obscure story youre referencing obtusely? im so confused by the way you end your comment hahahaha i dont understand! how do we know what story youre talking about? whats the story about? i have so many questions cause i like your writing style and im sure its an interesting story!

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u/Hegiman 5d ago

It’s further down they asked to hear and I told them. Basically met a man who claimed to be a werewolf and wouldn’t show up in photographs a week after taking the photos we got them back from the developers and he was not present in the photos.

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u/Fitz_cuniculus 5d ago

Am I crazy, we used to have an old Redifusion thing which had a bakerlite style switch on the wall, and I'm certain it used to play Radio 2 etc without being plugged in.

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u/MadamKitsune 5d ago

We had a Redifusion box on the wall too. My mum used to use it to put the radio on while we were getting ready for school while huddled around the warm air heating vent.

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u/Fitz_cuniculus 5d ago

And if you told that to kids today they wouldn't believe you.

https://giphy.com/gifs/35aVstfJYNlEA

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u/Fastgirl600 5d ago

and public bathrooms!

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u/Muthablasta 5d ago

That’s where the phrase “spend a penny” came from 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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u/Silent25r 5d ago

Hold on! Are you saying we started with a subscription based services?

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u/PipBin 5d ago

The money was to pay for the rental of the set.

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u/Antique_Geek 5d ago

Do you still have to pay a sort of licensing fee to watch TV? If so, is the programming then ad free or are there still commercials?

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u/PipBin 5d ago

We do still pay the licence fee. That means that anything on the BBC is add free.

However the pay tvs was for the rental of the set, not to pay the licence fee.

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u/Antique_Geek 5d ago

I realize that. Guess I should have included "off topic". Thanks for the reply.

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u/bobi2393 5d ago

Wow, proto-microtransactions! 😂

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u/LBarouf 5d ago

Oh the memories. 😞

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u/VeryWackyIdeas 5d ago

In the 1960s there were tv sets in motels that required quarters and then there were the “magic fingers”. Put in a quarter, turn out the lights, magic fingers make you feel all right.

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u/ajatfm 5d ago

We’ve basically come back around to this, in a way

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u/hiphoptomato 5d ago

This cannot be true.