On Aug 24, 10:43*am, Rod wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:59:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

For your perusal...

A '''pattress''' is

Possibly not a word. *At least my Concise OED doesn't have it (the online
OED is subscription) niether do a couple of other online dictionaries.
There is a wikipedia entry but that is wikipedia, pass the salt, thank
you.

However I have used the word, so it does "exist" but I use it to mean a
multiple outlet flex mounted trailing socket. What this article describes
I would call a "back box".

If you google pattress in the UK you get about 30,000 hits, some refering
to wall tie plates (the large metal plates used to spread the load on a
wall when ties are threaded through the building to stop it falling down).

Dreadful Wiki entry.

A pattress is, IMHO, the plate used *behind* a switch, socket, sconce
(or similar). Typically early pattresses were wood, often had a
'sculpted' edge (to match the cornices :-) ) and were usually varnished.

Obviously, more recent usage has covered more things, but it is still
not a back box. And surely "pattress box" should only apply to a surface
mount box which could indeed be sensibly mounted onto a pattress - and
never a standard galvanised in-wall type?

AIUI, the pattress did the following:

o * Covered up an unsightly hole in the plaster - much more difficult in
the days before Polyfilla. And to hide any future cracking imnmediately
around a hole in said plaster. Especially important as early
installations would very often have been into existing buildings and
minimising any requirement for redecoration would have been important.

o * Allowed any suitable fixing to be used between the pattress and the
wall (and possible gave enough area for two screws which might not have
been possible with some of the small switches used in early
installations) - but left the fixing between the switch and the pattress
to be standardised.

o * Stopped the edges of a small switch from digging into soft-ish plaster.

o * Stopped the switch from being screwed onto an uneven surface where
it would be easy to overstress it as the screws are tightened or in
later use.

o * Reduced the visual impact of a switch just stuck on the wall - it
must have looked very odd before they were common.

o * Gave somewhere for cable to turn (if it was being surface mounted).

Given they were used for gas as well, it might have had specific
purposes in that context.

Your use seems to make perfect sense if you consider that people have
often been seen making extension cables with ordinary sockets/socket
boxes mounted onto a bit of wood.

Wow! - you can *still* get wooden gas pattresses:

http://www.gofixit.co.uk/acatalog/wood_pattress_block.html

Yet again - common words largely ignored by dictionaries. So many
trade-related words simply have not made it into them - even if they
exist in the OED database.

You can still buy wooden electrical pattresses too.

Dictionaries are very useful tools, but are a bit overestimated imho.
Another example is 'anonymous' which dictionaries generally describe
as having no name, when usually it means declaring no name, which isnt
the same.

I'll do a bit more writing when I get the time, cheers everyone


NT