Making money from vintage repairs - is it possible?

[Terry]

When talking about voltages it is important to consider the context.

What might apply in the world in general where we might be considering any voltage from a few millivolts to several million is completely different to the voltages in a radio where the nomenclature that we use is relative to usage.

Thus a High Tension supply is much higher than a Low Tension supply but note that neither of them is actually defined!

Thus the HT in a battery receiver might only be 90V or even 67V but a high power amplifier might have a 400V HT rail!

As far as language is concerned I am firmly in the UK English camp. Americans seem to be more insular - I've heard that they sub-title UK television programs in US English! - so, if I was posting in a US forum, I would be happy to post in US English.

Is it wrong for me to expect a US contributor to a UK forum to reciprocate? I'm referring here to terminology rather than spelling as, apart from anything else, forums such as this attract a lot of novices who are attempting to understand a complex subject which is new to them, so why confuse them by using what is essentially a foreign language?

As far as I know, there is only one US spelling which is officially accepted in the UK - program - but only when referring to a computer program.

This came about, I believe, because, in the early days of personal computing, virtually the only supplies of hardware were from US manufacturers like Apple, et al - likewise much of the available documentation - and programming languages were similarly of US origin.

The US disk, as opposed to UK disc, is widely accepted for similar reasons - and is approved by my UK English spell checker, but I'm not sure that it is officially sanctioned ...

As far as Mr Webster's influence on  US spelling is concerned, I have read that this was done deliberately as a nationalistic desire to be as unlike UK English as possible but this is debatable as out own spelling was only being standardised at around the same time.

Going even further off-topic, this business of the history of the evolution of English can be quite interesting, at least in small doses! For example, I live in Seven Kings which is often said to originate from a meeting of seven saxon kings in a forest clearing nearby. However, this is almost certainly a myth, (despite support from the local council!) and derive from seffoca ingas - again saxon but meaning the place of Seffoca's tribe or people. It also aligns well with the origin of nearby Barking - berroca ingas, the place of Berroca's tribe.

I'm in a suburb of Ilford, which is puzzling as it is based on a ford across the River Roding. Except that, in saxon times, the lower section of the Roding was known as the Hyle or Uyle.

Not far from Hampton Court is Hampton Wick which seems to mean village, village, village ...

[Old Sparky]

On another well known Vintage forum several posts would have been moved or deleted for being 'off-topic'. It's good that this doesn't happen here, because the comments about language & spelling make interesting reading.

[Nowhere-Man]

Regarding American spellings, I've often thought that their versions of words such as 'color, flavor, thru, plow, etc., were more logical than the English ones.  Check (Cheque) is another example, and one that reminds me that a lot of 'English' words, programme being another, are actually French in origin.  The American spellings are, I'm told, due to Mr. Webster of dictionary fame.

It's the same between mainland Spain and South America. Mainland Spanish for example, is spoken much faster. The difference also is South American Spanish is a bit old fashioned. They might use the word "auto" instead of "coche" in the mainland. There are differences also between language in Mexico, Chile and Argentina or even Cuba.

[Terry]

It is easy to overlook the fact that the early settlers of the American continent lived in virtual isolation from their European descendants for around 400 years.

True, others followed therm but, over time, as the local population bred and increased in number, the newcomers would have distinctly been in the minority when they arrived.

I recall hearing Bill Bryson  on Radio 4 some years ago discussing the differences between US and UK English where he pointed out that many words that we think of as specifically American, such as faucet were, in fact, in common everyday use in England at the time of the Pilgrim Fathers and other early settlers.

They took their language with them and, from that time on, the development of language on both sides of the Atlantic followed different paths for 400 years, so that words that fell out of favour here stayed in continuous use over there.

It was only with the developments of the gramophone and wireless that the majority of either population found out what their transatlantic cousins sounded like after 400 years of independent development.

I'm sure that Spanish and Portuguese suffered in the same way

[ppppenguin]

The US gallon is the old Winchester wine gallon. From a time when the gallon hadn't been standardised in Britain. They stuck with that version while we standardised on another.