Found this on a website today... immediately thought of sending the idea to Rafiki to improve there performance.........

"History

Fire alarms are not a new idea. The first detector was patented in 1902 by George Darby.

The heat detector and fire alarm operated by closing a circuit to sound the alarms if the temperature rose above the safe limit.

The contact was made by bridging a gap with a conductor, allowing one plate to fall against another. This movement was caused simply by a block of butter! Which melted as the temperature rose."

Found this on a website today... immediately thought of sending the idea to Rafiki to improve there performance.........

"History

Fire alarms are not a new idea. The first detector was patented in 1902 by George Darby.

The heat detector and fire alarm operated by closing a circuit to sound the alarms if the temperature rose above the safe limit.

The contact was made by bridging a gap with a conductor, allowing one plate to fall against another. This movement was caused simply by a block of butter! Which melted as the temperature rose."

Could call it, I cant believe its not mercury switch .

I like this! And know exactly what you mean about Rafiki's!

I remember reading something similar many moons ago - and that he'd experimented with all sorts of things to separate the two strips of metal - ice, butter, paper, and so on to try to provide some sort of variable in the temperature setting.

Interesting also that even today we more or less rely on a bunch of cheap thermostats stuck on the roof to tell us the kitchen is on fire........

Bill.

Found this on a website today... immediately thought of sending the idea to Rafiki to improve there performance.........

"History

Fire alarms are not a new idea. The first detector was patented in 1902 by George Darby.

The heat detector and fire alarm operated by closing a circuit to sound the alarms if the temperature rose above the safe limit.

The contact was made by bridging a gap with a conductor, allowing one plate to fall against another. This movement was caused simply by a block of butter! Which melted as the temperature rose."

Could call it, I cant believe its not mercury switch .

We took some of those out of a building a little while ago.... looked like a 4ft single fluorescent fitting with a wire that caused the whole fitting to tilt when it got hot and stretched... in turn caused this little glass tube with mercury in to tilt and make a contact....

On the roof, i suppose it keeps the FAs down

We took some of those out of a building a little while ago.... looked like a 4ft single fluorescent fitting with a wire that caused the whole fitting to tilt when it got hot and stretched... in turn caused this little glass tube with mercury in to tilt and make a contact....

Hard to believe these are still about, we stripped out about 360 of them from a whiskey bond about 5 years ago. Although there are plenty more still active in these distilleries round the country.

definately know what you guys mean especially with the Rafiki Sita, although I've not used it for a few years (because of all the problems we had) the guy I worked for at the time just kept going on about how cheap it was