What is this ?

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acrwc10

Master Code Professional
Location
CA
Occupation
Building inspector
Any one know what this is ? It was in a house built in 1932 and was 6" away from a duplex receptacle.
PDRM0032.jpg
PDRM0033.jpg

It had a hot on one pin and a neutral on the other. It was knob and tube. The house was on a very large lot.
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
Yep. It was for AM radio, 'aerial' and earth. The antenna was probably a long wire in the attic. This is the old-time version of wiring a house for cable-TV. Notice that the mounting strap matches standard device mounting-screw spacing.
 

acrwc10

Master Code Professional
Location
CA
Occupation
Building inspector
That makes sense. There was a long BLK #12 running along a rafter from plate line to the ridge. When I came in to the project the house had been moved about 500' and most of the K&T was cut so I couldn't figure it out. I thought it may be something like that though. One kind of cool item I found today is an old piece of news paper that was dated 1932 and had an ad for a 5 bedroom house on a 50x250 lot for $30 a month.
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
acrwc10 said:
That makes sense. There was a long BLK #12 running along a rafter from plate line to the ridge. When I came in to the project the house had been moved about 500' and most of the K&T was cut so I couldn't figure it out. I thought it may be something like that though. One kind of cool item I found today is an old piece of news paper that was dated 1932 and had an ad for a 5 bedroom house on a 50x250 lot for $30 a month.
A buck a day, and it probably took as much labor to make a monthly payment as it does now.

Before the advent of EGC's, everything grounded was white, even the water-pipe grounds.
 

acrwc10

Master Code Professional
Location
CA
Occupation
Building inspector
What is funny is this house had so many add ons it had about five panels.What a mess that was. Who knows where this house will be in 70 more years. The property that two houses were on is now being turned into 40 condos and 5 single famly homes. The worst is the 5 S.F.H. are nice size about 2800sq ft each and all 5 sit on a 75'x150' lot now. No yard space.
 
What is this?

What is this?

I have to disagree with Larry.
In 1932 you did not need a huge antenna for AM radio. They had ferrite core wound antennas for am by then. I would guess that was for armature or primitive HAM radio. A long horizontal wire is not very good at am capture, but a vertical one is, depending on the ratio of length to frequency. As am is amplitude modulation a horizontal wire would pick up a very small signal and lots of noise and you don't need a ground plane for it either. I bet the ridge wire was tapped in the middle, making this a classic "T" antenna for shortwave.
But I have been wrong before.
And I just reread the OP. Is the roof a 12/12 pitch? I see now you said it ran UP the roof, not along the ridge like I thought. So it is a "slope" antenna, the almost perfect type for multiple bandwith reception. Is there an old RCA Transoceantic radio in the house?
 
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