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Old £20 Notes


ukelele lady

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I read on cee-fax today that it's the last day to change old £20 notes at the bank.

I never knew they were going out of circulation.

If you still have any then you can apply to the Bank of England to get them changed.

I never knew anything about this but I've noticed my husbands side of the mattress has

lowered some what.

I only had some last week from a cash machine, it wasn't publisized much. :o

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I read on cee-fax today that it's the last day to change old £20 notes at the bank.

I never knew they were going out of circulation.

If you still have any then you can apply to the Bank of England to get them changed.

I never knew anything about this but I've noticed my husbands side of the mattress has

lowered some what.

I only had some last week from a cash machine, it wasn't publisized much. :o

I understand that your own bank will still accept them for a while yet although I supposed the're not obliged to.

I found an old Duke of Wellington Fiver a couple of weeks ago and my bank was happy to credit my account with it.

It wasn't in particularly good condition 'so wouldn't have been of interest to a collector.

HD

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I read on cee-fax today that it's the last day to change old £20 notes at the bank.

Cefax!!!!

Cefax, Teletext and Oracle, how very 1980's

With their low res blocky graphics which made your TV look like a Sinclair ZX Spectrum game they were the height of technology then.

With the growth of the Internet and news web sites I am suprised they are still around.

Does anyone (other than ukelele lady who clearly does) still use them?

I was under the impression that they were part of the analogue TV system (adding data to the top, "off screen" lines) and that they "disappeared" when digital TV came in.

Certainly our digital TV "zapper" doesn't have the old teletext buttons on it and now the coloured buttons and the "press red" onscreen messages give access to the superior BBC iplayer and the like.

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Cefax!!!!

Cefax, Teletext and Oracle, how very 1980's

With their low res blocky graphics which made your TV look like a Sinclair ZX Spectrum game they were the height of technology then.

With the growth of the Internet and news web sites I am suprised they are still around.

Does anyone (other than ukelele lady who clearly does) still use them?

I was under the impression that they were part of the analogue TV system (adding data to the top, "off screen" lines) and that they "disappeared" when digital TV came in.

Certainly our digital TV "zapper" doesn't have the old teletext buttons on it and now the coloured buttons and the "press red" onscreen messages give access to the superior BBC iplayer and the like.

Sorry ,is it cefax. I never read it but my husband does,

I used to read teletex but I think that's finished. You can still get these even with a digital up to date TV.

Dual purpose tellies that's what I call them.

And what about tonight, the best programme of the week ,Question Time.

Just switch from digital to analogue and you can text your response to the questions or answers

on the programme. they are printed on the bottom of the screen.

Surely there's not just me does this, I see one or two printed from Sheffield. When the big switch

over happens we won't be able to do this I suppose.

Must go , Question Time is coming on.

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Sorry ,is it cefax. I never read it but my husband does,

I used to read teletex but I think that's finished. You can still get these even with a digital up to date TV.

Dual purpose tellies that's what I call them.

And what about tonight, the best programme of the week ,Question Time.

Just switch from digital to analogue and you can text your response to the questions or answers

on the programme. they are printed on the bottom of the screen.

Surely there's not just me does this, I see one or two printed from Sheffield. When the big switch

over happens we won't be able to do this I suppose.

Must go , Question Time is coming on.

Just like me ukelele lady, although you are perfectly ofay with the height of modern technology like computers and the Internet you still seem to have a passion for the "old technologies", like the very 1980's Cefax system.

Now, I think I will go and watch some television broadcast on my old black & white 405 line VHF Band 1 and 3 receiver with 17" screen

((If you still have one it won't work, 405 line broadcasting finished in, I think, 1979))

I'll follow that up by listening to a few gramophone records on the old Dansette autochange portable

((About as portable as a sack of coal))

Then finish the evening off with a piano roll playing on the Steck upright with themodist movement.

((Anybody know what that was?))

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Just like me ukelele lady, although you are perfectly ofay with the height of modern technology like computers and the Internet you still seem to have a passion for the "old technologies", like the very 1980's Cefax system.

Now, I think I will go and watch some television broadcast on my old black & white 405 line VHF Band 1 and 3 receiver with 17" screen

((If you still have one it won't work, 405 line broadcasting finished in, I think, 1979))

I'll follow that up by listening to a few gramophone records on the old Dansette autochange portable

((About as portable as a sack of coal))

Then finish the evening off with a piano roll playing on the Steck upright with themodist movement.

((Anybody know what that was?))

You've got a pianola.

Brilliant.

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You've got a pianola.

Brilliant.

Well identified vox

A pianola, more correctly termed a player piano

(Calling a player piano a Pianola is a bit like calling every make of vacuum cleaner a Hoover)

But unfortunately I don't own one, :( - I just have a couple of friends who do. ;-)

One of them has a reproducing piano with Duo Art mechanism, what an amazing piece of kit that is.

Using only air pressure and pneumatics it not only reads and plays the music, it reads a punched binary code on the roll which controls tempo, expression and volume automatically so that the roll sounds exactly like the original pianist who "cut" the roll by playing it on a specially designed piano. A normal player piano cannot do this, it reproduces the music only and requires someone sat at the piano to add changes in tempo and expression, without which it does tend to sound rather "mechanical". There were attempts to overcome this, the previously mentioned themodist being one.

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As a young lad aged about twelve or so I remember one of my school pals taking me to look at his grandad's garden shed in Findon Street, Hillsborough. There his grandfather used to produce fan-fold music for fair-organs and I suppose Pianolas. The material appeared to be thick brown card with cloth hinges and he would work on a wooden jig with sheet music propped up in front of him. He cut the holes using a series of small punches of different widths and a tiny hammer. There was a grid marked on the jig but he worked very quickly and then studied each "page" to check for mistakes. I asked him what he did if he made a mistake, he told me he didn't make mistakes !

I suppose it's a process that could be easily mechanised nowadays with modern technology.

HD

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As a young lad aged about twelve or so I remember one of my school pals taking me to look at his grandad's garden shed in Findon Street, Hillsborough. There his grandfather used to produce fan-fold music for fair-organs and I suppose Pianolas. The material appeared to be thick brown card with cloth hinges and he would work on a wooden jig with sheet music propped up in front of him. He cut the holes using a series of small punches of different widths and a tiny hammer. There was a grid marked on the jig but he worked very quickly and then studied each "page" to check for mistakes. I asked him what he did if he made a mistake, he told me he didn't make mistakes !

I suppose it's a process that could be easily mechanised nowadays with modern technology.

HD

If it was on folded card (fan fold?) then it was fairground organ music, piano music is always on a paper roll. On a fair organ the "book" is fed through the "keyframe" (which can be keyed or keyless) whereas in a piano the "roll" passes over the "tracker bar".

Fairground organs of note were all continental, made by the likes of Gavioli, Merhengi and Verbeeck to name just 3. Gavioli of Paris is credited with inventing the folded card book system and employing men to do the job your friends grandfather was doing, - cutting the books. Being originally a French job the people that did this for a living were called "noteurs" Gavioli himself was a perfectionist and if anyone made a mistake the whole book was thrown away and the poor noteur had to start from the beginning all over again.

The grid marked on the jig was positioned that that the hole in the card went over the right hole / key in the keyframe and ended up playing the right note as intended.

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There was a grid marked on the jig but he worked very quickly and then studied each "page" to check for mistakes. I asked him what he did if he made a mistake, he told me he didn't make mistakes !

HD

People regularly ask me things like "What happens if you cut it short." (their carpet that is)

My usual answer is "It doesn't reach the wall" he he

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Gavioli of Paris is credited with inventing the folded card book system

Strange that vox's mention of carpets reminded me of this extra bit.

Gavioli actually copied the punched card book idea from another Frenchman called Jaquard who worked in the French textile industry.

Jaquard had used a system of pneumatics controlled by punched cards to operate a loom which was much faster and more consistent in cloth quality than a hand operated loom.

He extended this idea to using a card punched book to control several shuttles on the same loom each carrying a different coloured thread. It was possible, by using the right holes in the right place on the card to weave very intricate patterns and designs into the fabric which would hardly be possible to do by hand, and to produce the cloth by the metre very quickly.

The Jaquard loom which is capable of doing this is again, a very impressive piece of kit.

There is one on display in the mill museum at Halifax near the Peace Hall.(or there was 15 years ago when I last went)

This was effectively (as are the fair organ and the player piano) a nineteenth century, mechanical programmable computer :o

Who says that computers are all so modern, - the basic ideas of programming were there in the punched books 120 years ago.

Gavioli effectively "borrowed" the punched book programming technology from Jaquard.

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On the way back from North Wales a few weeks ago we called at a place called Erddig, it's a minor stately home etc. Going through the house you come to a music room, with a grand piano in one corner and various instruments and music everywhere. In the corner behind the piano was what looked like a small hamonium, and the guide on duty explained it was a pianola attachment for the piano, which fixed to the keyboard and hey presto!

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Strange that vox's mention of carpets reminded me of this extra bit.

Gavioli actually copied the punched card book idea from another Frenchman called Jaquard who worked in the French textile industry.

There was a piece about this subject on "Industrial Revelations" which is shown on the Freeview Channel, QUEST.

If you've never seen the series it's worth looking out for, There was one (or more) about Sheffield.

They (obviously) get repeated every now and then.

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On the way back from North Wales a few weeks ago we called at a place called Erddig, it's a minor stately home etc. Going through the house you come to a music room, with a grand piano in one corner and various instruments and music everywhere. In the corner behind the piano was what looked like a small hamonium, and the guide on duty explained it was a pianola attachment for the piano, which fixed to the keyboard and hey presto!

If you already had a conventional piano and wanted a player pioano this was like a "coversion kit". They were not very popular. It had to move (using pneumatics controlled by the roll) "fingers" placed over the keyboard of the piano which then played the piano in a conventional manner. A real player piano had a built in mechanism which operated the piano keys directly. Having this "extra layer" of mechanical operation didn't do a lot for the quality of playing as the "fingers" merely plonked the tune out without any expression or feeling at all and with no possibility of adding any.

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What an off topic topic this is turning into!

It was supposed to be about old £20 notes and now its about mechanical music.

I bet ukelele lady wishes she had never mentioned Ceefax which is what triggered all this off.

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Just like me ukelele lady, although you are perfectly ofay with the height of modern technology like computers and the Internet you still seem to have a passion for the "old technologies", like the very 1980's Cefax system.

Now, I think I will go and watch some television broadcast on my old black & white 405 line VHF Band 1 and 3 receiver with 17" screen

((If you still have one it won't work, 405 line broadcasting finished in, I think, 1979))

I'll follow that up by listening to a few gramophone records on the old Dansette autochange portable

((About as portable as a sack of coal))

Then finish the evening off with a piano roll playing on the Steck upright with themodist movement.

((Anybody know what that was?))

Dave are you taking the P? ;-)

I know a young organ player who still uses a themodist that's if it's what I think.it is.

He uses it when he's playing for the dancers and one particular night a certain

couple was out of step with the rest of the dancers and was blaming the organist's

themodist.. he he

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Dave are you taking the P? ;-)

I know a young organ player who still uses a themodist that's if it's what I think.it is.

He uses it when he's playing for the dancers and one particular night a certain

couple was out of step with the rest of the dancers and was blaming the organist's

themodist.. he he

The themodist is not an instrument in itself but a particular type of mechanism on a player piano to add expression. The pneumatic air chest is split in 2 between the notes E and F above middle C and can have their volume (air pressure) controlled independently. This allows for altering the accompanyment (lower bass end) relative to the melody (top end) automatically by a few extra holes punched in the roll.

There is more info on it here

Themodist

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I understand that your own bank will still accept them for a while yet although I supposed the're not obliged to.

I found an old Duke of Wellington Fiver a couple of weeks ago and my bank was happy to credit my account with it.

It wasn't in particularly good condition 'so wouldn't have been of interest to a collector.

HD

I wonder if the bank will still accept any of these I happen to find lying around?

In fact I wonder if some of our younger members would know what it is, how much it is worth and what what it was replaced by?

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I wonder if the bank will still accept any of these I happen to find lying around?

In fact I wonder if some of our younger members would know what it is, how much it is worth and what what it was replaced by?

When they were phased out I had a few crisp new ones which I thought would be worth keeping.

I put them between the pages of a book to keep them in good nick.

Years later I remembered about them.

That was after my ex wife had sold shelves full of books to a book dealer.

----

Don't worry about getting rid of the old 20's before the due date. The bank will change them anyway no matter how old.

But - they will only give you the "face value" of it. so, if you've got a very old note you may get less than it's collectible value.

eg. If you give them a 60year old fiver, they will give you £5 in return, but it may be worth much more to a collector.

Obviously, as with all things collectible, there are so many ifs and buts to consider, but your Ten Bob, it seems, is worth about 10 times more than its face value Dave.

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.

----

Don't worry about getting rid of the old 20's before the due date. The bank will change them anyway no matter how old.

That was the point of my first post, in the news it said the last day for the High Street banks to

change old £20 notes was June 30th.

After that you must apply to the Bank of England London.

I haven't got any but I've got a large white £5, photo copied of course. :)

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That was the point of my first post, in the news it said the last day for the High Street banks to

change old £20 notes was June 30th.

After that you must apply to the Bank of England London.

I haven't got any but I've got a large white £5, photo copied of course. :)

Can the Bank EVER actually refuse to pay you just the face value of any note?

The Bank of England did after all originally issue the note

Somewhere on the front of the note it is supposed to carry the words, from the Bank, -

"I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ON DEMAND THE SUM OF..." and whatever the face value of the note is

Surely that "Promise" is legally binding.

It certainly is on "legal tender" (ie, current issue notes) BUT can you remove the promise from a note just because it is a little bit older?

If the note was issued in good faith with a legally binding promise of its face value then surely it cannot be refused.

To quote Harold Wilson, -

"Now, of course this won't affect the value of the pound in your pocket"

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To quote Harold Wilson, -

"Now, of course this won't affect the value of the pound in your pocket"

Referendum 1973 :

Straight bananas and cucumbers or not ? Please tick [Yes] or [No]

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Referendum 1973 :

Straight bananas and cucumbers or not ? Please tick [Yes] or [No]

I thought the referrendum was in 1975

We went into the EU "common Market" in 1973, under the Conservative "Heath" Government

But only got a referendum on it in 1975 once a Labour Government had been returned to power.

NOW.

Regardless of the real question on the referrendum ballot paper (not about bananas and cucumbers)

Did it say

Please tick [Yes] or [No]

Or did it say

S'il vous plaît cocher [Oui] ou [Non]

<_<

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