Before Circuit Breakers, Early Electricity Turned Homes Into Fire Traps

Comments · 70

• DE

  @devildog1912 · 1 month ago

  All the, "problems" that are listed with knob-and-tube, are actually the benefits. The system was designed such that the insulation could fall off, and because of the ceramic insulators, there would be no contact with combustible framing materials. Also, not being in the same sheathing sleeve was a benefit that was sacrificed for speed efficiency during the housing boom following WWII. Circuit protection wasn't decades behind the development of electrical circuits, either. In fact, it followed very early on.

  10

• JU

  @JUSTWANTTOSING2868 · 1 month ago

  I was a child in the 1950's and yes I remember those times when something would get shorted out and thankfully, the fuse blew and opened the circuit. My father always kept a supply of new fuses available so we never had an issue of being without one. The nicest feature of circuit breakers is the cost and material savings!

  12

• TH

  @thomasfeinstein3771 · 1 month ago

  I was in business for 45 years, servicing machine tools.  There are cases for both being better.  Fuses do protect wiring and in more modern times of electronics they are better.  The problem always was, when the fuses blow, people install a bigger ratings to cure the problem, maybe a slow blow, over a normal or quick blow fuse.  But all it did was make a bigger problem, destroying electronics.  I made lots of money and service calls, because people did not realize the fuse blew for a reason.  So many times, people spent thousands of dollars in unnecessary repairs by installing wrong fuses.  Most commonly is when a servo motor went bad, shorting out, and reaches the end of its life.  So the cure was install bigger fuses, resulting in burning out of the servo amplifiers driving the shorted servo motor.  When you went out, opened the cabinet, and found circuit boards that caught fire, with burned electronic parts spread all through the cabinet you knew what the customer did.  The wiring burned in this video was equivalent to the electronics exploding.  So circuit breakers definitely have their place, and for the typical consumer who does not know all the tricks to installing a correct fuse(as shown in the video), the circuit breakers are better.  A excellent video, love it..

  5

• JE

  @jeremynevens6649 · 1 month ago

  Nevermind the fuses and breakers..real question is how the hell that dude walked right thru the electric chair...

  11

• MB

  @Mbarnstein62891 · 1 month ago

  Electroboom would have a field day with this!

  3

• 12

  @123ElectricMonkey · 1 month ago (edited)

  @<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imYSfX1FdQc&amp;t=426">7:06</a>dude has a mid 2000&apos;s MCC , PVC washtub and energy guide rated water heater &nbsp;in his basement in 1940

  4

• RA

  @ralphbalfoort2909 · 12 days ago

  Our house, built in the early 1960&apos;s, had a fuse box. &nbsp;When we had central air installed in the 2010&apos;s, our contractor required that we have an electrician come in and install a circuit breaker panel.. And the electrician that company sent didn&apos;t read the work order completely; turned out that he was required to install an outside outlet box with GFCI breakers.

• VI

  @vince6829 · 3 weeks ago

  Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

• AP

  @appleimacdude · 1 month ago

  How accurate and how reliable were the early circuit breakers? &nbsp;What I envision for greatly improved safety would be good circuit breakers, which feed into fuses - so in normal operation, fuses would almost never blow - but if the circuit breaker fails, there is a back up. The best of both worlds -

  2

• HA

  @HammondC3 · 1 month ago

  I have a couple of single pole Edison fuse cut-out blocks I got out of a house we tore down in Fort Edward NY not too far from our place bin Schaghticoke NY. They use fuse wires and they can still be procured from England as they still use them. I have ran power through them and they still work fine. I also have a very early fuse wire panel from the Canon building in Troy NY and it is in active use in my museum trailer I installed it in the early 2000’s and it is awesome! I have plenty of of replacement British fuse wires for it. I also have 2 Charles Steinmetz designed slate open live parts Edison screw base panels in use there as well, and all are live and work perfectly! I use 15 and 20 amp fuses on the hot side of each fuse and 30 amp fuses in the neutral side so the 15-20 amp fuses will blow cutting power in the live wire but not the neutral so it remains connected and making sure that if one overloads and blows the fuse, the circuit is dead and at ground potential. So properly handled, old fuse boxes are perfectly safe. I have a 1916 Western Electric catalog and GE, Westinghouse, and other makes of large high current rated circuit breakers are listed, in the 30 amp to 10,000 amp range, and no small breakers were even made yet. “mini-breakers” that screw into existing Edison screw fuse boxes appeared in the 30’s id I am correct, and are still made. They have a button that pops out when tripped, and stays in when reset and on. You can get them at Home Depot. Cheers! Rick Delair. 👍😋

  1

• CA

  @carlluis770 · 1 month ago

  Wow as an electrical engineer in MEP this video is amazing suprise you didn’t mention the GFCI and AFCI circuit breakers . I was wondering if you can make a video on the history of grounding . Like the ground rod or UFER ground . Great video

  1

• KE

  @kevxsi16v · 1 month ago

  Impressive that MCBs were thought about so long ago in the U.K. we were still installing rewirable fuses up until the late 80s and they are still extremely common even now. <br>That being said with the modern influx of cheap Chinese circuit breakers now flooding the market at least fuses work!

  3