Yet another question for the Lads on the east side of the pond !

[PTsideshow]

I picked up 6 hardbound reprints of the Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician magazines From 1901,02,03,04 years they were reprinted in the 1977. They have some great stuff in them, they also have some stuff that would have the nanny police, going nuts such as their coverage of home radium experiments 

the question I have is in regards to some letters that follow the address of some companies.
Like this:
W. Macmillan & Co. Mar Street ALLOA,N.B.
or
Clyde Model Dockyard and Engine Depot, Argyll Arcade, Glasgow, N.B.

What does N.B. stand for? At first I thought it might be New Brunswick Canada, but googling it it comes up with UK IP addies. But no clear explanation of the N.B.
Thanks

[Jasonb]

I've not seen that before but maybe its "North of the Border" England/Scotland border.

Jason

[Bluechip]

Hi Troops

Nearly Jason ... Stands for 'North Britain'

If you ever trawl around old census doo-dahs and the like, it was the (now probably non-PC ) old expression for Scotland.

Quite why I don't know. Never seen the reciprocal ie SB for South Britain.

Dave BC

[PTsideshow]

That is sort of what I thought North Britain or North of the Border. But ya never know, I googled Alloa N.B. and there are a lot of hits with the N.B. but none I found that spelled it out.

Here are two of the adds: Lot of the ads for London Addresses, have E.C. W.C. etc which I assume stand for East Central,West Central since this was the days before the postal zip codes or your equivalent.





Enjoy the ads

[andyf]

Great adverts  !

Being the largest city in the UK, the EC, SW etc codes came into use quite early on. Before everywhere got a full postcode (zipcode) 40-odd years ago, it was fairly common practice to omit "London" when addressing letters, and just write (bottom advert) to The Book Department, 6 Farringdon Avenue, E.C. As you rightly surmise, E.C. = East Central.

The old London district codes were incorporated into the modern London postcodes, so that address wouldl be something like EC1V 2XZ nowadays.

Andy

[PTsideshow]

Look to the lathe advert and at the bottom it gives the postage to the US I guess, And in another old magazine it covered shipping a completed boiler ready to steam from a builder in London to the west cost US for under $10.00 dollars in the fifties. It was a small launch type boiler. He did note that it was average in shipping time length, what ever that means.