Friday Reads – 23 August 2019

1. Solar roadways are just a hilariously spectacularly bad idea from almost every angle. The only way a solar roadway could seriously work is if instead of replacing the road surface, you build a “roof” for the road. But I’d imagine it would make more sense to do this in places like car parks where managing the infrastructure’s going to be easier than on a very long narrow strip of land. Plus you then get the added bonus of having covered parking.

2. The “Guinea Season Ticket” clearly does not appear to be a season ticket to Ally Pally. It is a publicity flyer and location map which indicates that ordinary admission is 1s (5p) – a lot of money in 1875.
   The season price quoted is 1 Guinea, ie the same as 21 ordinary admissions (£1.05), a veritable fortune!
   The map show a line under construction from Stamford Hill to the Palace. This should, of course, have been Seven Sisters.
   The article claims that the line was never built. It actually ran from 1878 to 1963.

   Is this the usual standard of MappingLondon research? Disappointing.

3. @Muzer – Never likely to stand up to HGV wear. I wonder if lighter users though could have merit like footpaths and cycleways, it would also be an excuse to maintain them more fully.

   The Siemensbahn is the very definition of Urban Reconnections.

4. @Nameless

   1 shilling was not that much. Depending on the source and measure used (inflation, earnings, purchasing power), it would be equivalent to somewhere around £3 and £25, which is comparable to ticket prices for various attractions today. So a season ticket would be between £63 and £525 which also does not seem that expensive.

   When thinking about the value of money in the past we have to take into account physical limitations, the choices were probably either sixpence or a shilling, even if the optimal price would have been 10¼d, while today attractions can easily charge £4.56 if they want to.

   The £25 figure that comes from the earnings of very poorly paid people who would not be so poorly paid today – very poorly paid people would not be going on leisure trips at all but a single admission was not outside the means of the majority of people (and most people would not go 21 times).

5. Some of the lowest-paid were actually not as badly-off as it would seem: my grandmother was in domestic service – on paper very poorly paid, but she would have had her bed, board and working clothes provided, so might well have afforded a shilling for a trip to Ally Pally on her afternoon off. Conversely, her employer’s salary as a Harley Street doctor would be largely expended in maintaining his large household, including a house large enough for all those servants to live in. (And it would have been almost unthinkable for middle or upper class married couples to bothy be earning)

6. ‘When thinking about the value of money in the past we have to take into account physical limitations, the choices were probably either sixpence or a shilling” – that’s nonsense, I’m afraid. Even 80-odd years later many prices were in single figures of pence – the bus fare into town was 3d, for instance, and my pocket money of 10d a week went a long way. Trouser pockets didn’t last long, being full of bulky pennies.

7. I can remember when Pound was divisible by approximately one thousand …
   A “fourth-thing” being 1/960th of a £ …..

8. Black Jacks were a farthing each from my pocket money.

9. @timbeau – indeed an employed woman was made to resign upon marriage up to ww1. My grandmother, who had been an operator with the National Telephone Co up to 1910, was one such., to her chagrin.

   @Betterbee. These comparisons are difficult. For example, back in the early ’50s. a letter cost 2 1/2 old pence (1 p) to post, now about 70 times as much, although the formal index of inflation has perhaps increased less than half that. A loaf of bread was about 6d ( 2.5p) but now over 40 times as much. Televisions, on the other hand seem to have cost £200 since the ’60s albeit now bigger and in colour and able to restock your fridge when you’re not looking. This poses serious problems in forecasting inflation for very long life assets such as infrastructure or rolling stock.

   @Greg T – even worse, in the C19, the Mint struck quarter farthings – a mere 3760 to the pound – and even produced a trial 1/8th of a farthing….

   I have to say, though, that the only thing that could be bought for a farthing was two small aniseed balls, and the sweet shop man looked askance at such measly purchases. (Many ordinary items had prices in fractions of a penny – eggs, especially, attracted prices ending in farthings.)

   That’s enough wallowing now.

10. @Muzer, @Aleks

    Agreed, it seems almost philistine to lay a beautiful PV array and then invite HGVs to trash it!

    Couldn’t agree more about the benefits of providing a solar canopy in car parks – it makes sense in so many ways. See for example this installation – providing shade and shelter for employees, more than enough power for the office, and the ability to sell surplus electricity or to charge up (a small number of) EVs. There must be so much potential for business parks (e.g. Green Park near Reading) to install similar canopies over their car parks.

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