For More Of The Good Things In Life

The library is throwing away magazines from the 1950's and I brought some of them home. Below is an advertisement from the January 3, 1955 issue of Time magazine.

(Click on photo to enlarge)

Good things come from Aluminium. Well, except for what is shown in the illustration on the lower left. Anyone reading that paragraph should be thinking, "YIKES!"

As US Consumer Product Safety Commission brochure CPS #526 points out:

...homes wired with aluminium wire manufactured before 1972 (old technology aluminium wire) are 55 times more likely to have one or more connections reach "Fire Hazard Conditions" than a home wired with copper

"Fire Hazard Conditions" were described as:

...when receptacle cover plate mounting screws reach 149C (300F) or sparks were emitted from the receptacle, or material around the receptacle were charred

That is a serious flaw and around two millions American homes (according to this article in the Washington Post) have aluminum wire in them. That sounds like a small percentage of homes in the United States unless you are one of the unfortunate ones who own one of these houses. I have a friend who's house was wired with aluminium and the cost to remove it all and replace it with copper wasn't cheap.

Oh, and I did not leave out the periods at the end of the quoted sentences-the government doesn't seem to use them.