Meccano and electric shocks - Tony Cunnane's Afterthoughts

Written 16 December 2008

I’ve just read in a local newspaper that someone has received a nasty electrical shock from a faulty toaster. That reminded me that many years ago, 1948-1950, I had a growing collection of the famous red and green Meccano parts - and when eventually, I got a Meccano electric motor that was when I learned about electric shocks!

Meccano was brilliant and I learned more about levers, three speed gear boxes, differentials, traction engines and bascule bridges than I ever learned later from any source. Youngsters of today probably cannot imagine what life was like without mobile phones, computers, TVs with more than a single channel, and other electronic delights.

This was a cunning sales ploy by Meccano - and a shrewd move by my parents who probably realised that I would use my pocket money to finance the upgrade. After a number of birthdays and Christmases I ended up with a No 7 Set plus extra cog wheels and, my pride and joy, mains-operated electric motor that could be  used to drive a wide variety of models.

The motor was controlled by a rather heavy Bakelite cube with a spring loaded swivel control lever on the front which could  be used to vary the output voltage from zero to whatever the maximum was. There was a small problem with the Meccano's electric motor though. Every time  I touched the control lever I received an electric shock – quite a severe one and bad enough to hurt. I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time but I got around the problem by sticking a small piece of insulating tape on the end of the lever. Every now and again it slipped off so I got another electric shock.

As far as I can recall, I never mentioned the problem to my parents. I didn’t want to be thought of as a wimp – or whatever the 1950s word for wimp was! It never occurred to me that I might get electrocuted and, of course, there was no such thing as Health and Safety in those days. Perhaps I developed a sort of immunity to electric shocks because a few years later I managed to connect my wrist with a 1,200 volt high tension terminal whilst servicing an RAF high frequency transmitter and I still have the mark on my wrist to remind me. (You can read about that event here.)

I didn’t mention that to the RAF either.