Posted by Jon on April 10, 2001 at 13:07:11 from 199.158.80.11:
In Reply to: Re: Electricity at Beckfoot posted by Robert Hill on April 10, 2001 at 12:40:49:
Not at all - some lamps are electric. "Candles or lamps" admits the possibility of either. Even with electricity my wife and I sometimes light an oil lamp or candles for the atmosphere, and candles may be an alternative for a generator which isn't run during the night. The matter admits of ambiguity. The thread started with the proposal that Dick's use of a battery-operated bell for the pigeon alert was evidence against Beckfoot having electricity. Some of us consider that to be an over-reaching claim. As it has developed we have seen several ways in which Beckfoot could have had electricity, even without mains.
As further evidence that there must have been some source of elecricity in the house, telephones need a certain amount of current to activate the ringer. Most phone systems from the 40s and 50s at least had small transformers plugged into the mains. Telephones in the early days had acid batteries (one spilling was the reason for Bell's first message to Watson being what it was), later they had cranks operating dynamos. It's only the use of electronics which make current telephone systems capable of self-powered operation. Telephones in the US, at least, are required to list a Ringer Equivalence Number, which is a measure of how much power they require. The phone company is only required to provide a specific amount, so if all your telephone RENs exceed that value, your phone problems are yours, not theirs and they'll tell you to disconnect some of them.