On 03/11/2010 15:47, Ronald Raygun wrote:
Peter Parry wrote:

On Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:18:57 +0000, Dave Osborne
wrote:

Found under the floorboards of a house built in the late '50s or early
'60s.

Anybody shed any light on what "Non-association" might mean?

Rubber cable pre about 1948 was largely made by a group of companies
who formed the CMA (Cable Manufacturers Association) and fixed prices,
standards and supply quantities. Cable from non members was a cheaper
and lower quality "Nonazo" (non-Association) cable which was only
considered to be good enough for "ordinary" installations. Both CMA
and Nonazo were superceeded during WW2 by "war emergency cable" and I
believe production of Nonazo stopped in about 1948.

http://www.competition-commission.or....../004c07.pdf

One wonders whether Nonazo was really of lower quality, or just cheaper
because it wasn't as overpriced as the market leaders.

Manufacturer's associations set up to maintain product quality were not
uncommon before the establishment of British Standards. They followed in
the tradition of the medieval Guilds.

As with British Standards, you could be sure that association products
met a certain minimum standard. Non-association products would be
cheaper because they were not inspected or tested to the same standard
and, therefore, there was no guarantee of the quality.

Much in the same way as a non-Heinz baked bean is cheaper than but not
necessarily inferior to a Heinz one.

I've never found one that was not.

Colin Bignell