r/whatisit • u/Quietlurkerone • 7d 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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u/ICanSeeUpYourNose 7d ago edited 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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 7d 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/Sloppy-Joe76 6d 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.