"J Burns" wrote in message
...
I've seen old houses where all circuits enter the breaker box as cables,
but some rooms still have knob-and-tube wiring. (A homeowner who needed
to upgrade wiring for his kitchen may have found the old wiring adequate
in a bedroom.)

That leads to a question that didn't occur to me before. Was there a
proper way to connect K & T to a cable?

Originally, the K&T would have entered the fuse panel through screw in
ceramic insulators. When that panel was replaced they probably ran a piece
of BX cable to a junction box, and ran the K&T insulators into knockouts in
the J box, then either spliced with wire nuts or solder depending upon when
it was done. Here is a picture of an old K&T fuse box. Notice the fused
neutrals:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...seboxlocat.jpg