Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

Crikey, Mine was a 1930/40/50 set - that looks later than 1970

Me too :-)

One of the commonly used servers gives you no choice on that.

Correct. I think I bought it during a summer trip to Britain (for English language pracitce), which means 1976..79.

I also had a steam engine (Mamod?), which I think I got as a present.

Mind, I was a teenager when I got those "improvements". Good stuff for experiments :-D

I find that very hard to believe.

And common etiquette requires removing unwanted/uneeded or unnecessary cross posting.

Especially for ridiculous threads like this one.

I had one engineer who couldn't tell left from right, and couldn't tell a digital 1 from a 0. He was always getting logic wrong.

None of the groups in this particular thread are unwanted/uneeded or unnecessary

No one is holding a gun to your head and is forcing you to read any thread that doesn't interest you.

Clearly those who are posting in this thread feel otherwise.

The green spectacle on a semaphore signal used to use blue glass, as the combination of blue glass and a yellow oil lamp flame produced green light.

If you were an old buffer you could recall that port is always passed to the left.

I'm right handed, and my "official" favourite colour is green, which gives me the colour of the lights (which I never need).

Actually, for port and starboard you could use the etymology: "starboard" was originally "steerboard": the wide oar used to steer boats before proper rudders. This was on the right as most men (and hence steersmen) were right handed.

English didn't have a word for orange until the fruit was imported. Orange things were just described as red; hence "robin redbreast" which clearly has an orange breast.

Why would the centre tap have anything to do with them going in the same direction?

No, installing them with up as on is what's annoying, since down should be on, so you think they're off when they're on. Asking for an electrocution when someone's working on something.

No idea what century he's living in, we don't use pipes to provide earth, we use a 100A cable to the f****ng great big ground spike at the substation.

"Have to"? You don't have to do anything. You have a perfectly good ground in the wire, why make your own less effective one?

WTF is a house fan? Kitchen extractor? Ceiling fan?

There is no reason, unless you think the blades must rotate in a particular direction for some reason.

So I'm in danger of getting a 2 volt electric shock?!

Why would lights be these days and not other things?

There is no requirement to have ANY breakers, I have fuses.

And you'll sleep more soundly knowing you're being a double pansy.

They operate by spring, so of course they work like that. Sometimes you have to use common sense.

WTF is a service disconnect?