Hi, Russia was a major market for the European, and especially the Swedish, stove Industry, and many, if not all of their stoves carried Cyrillic lettering among the other languages. I posted some photos recently of a Prince No.60 stove, made by The Swedish maker, KF Eriksson's. This stove had cyrillic lettering on the burner head and prompted a comment by Hobo. I have been thinking about this and have a question: When did the Swedes stop putting cyrillic lettering on their stoves? Certainly Cyrillic markings were common on European-made stoves right up to the 1930s I would guess that the Russian market must have collapsed during WW2, and probably never recovered afterwards. Does anyone have any information or thoughts on this subject? It might help to date my Prince No.60 one-pint stove: Internal Link Best Regards, Kerophile
on your stove old alfabet is used. It was official until 1918, when it was changed to the new one. But there is a possibility that manufacturer simply didn,t change the stamp, because of cost, and used it after the alfabet was changed. I think stoves were imported in Russia till 1930, the end of New Economic Politics. After that import priorities were changed on heavy industry technologies
Hi Grigoriy.Thank you for the information on the Cyrillic alphabet. I would think that my Prince No.60 stove dates from the mid-1930s to 1950s perhaps, although KF Eriksson's did not date mark their blowlamps and stoves, unfortunately, and I have not yet found any of their catalogues. I did make an earlier CCS Post on languages used on classic stoves: Internal Link One of the stoves ( the Primus 221) is actually dated 1935. Which Cyrillic alphabet are they using? Best Regards, Kerophile
What were some of the alphabet changes? On George's burner, I can only read the PRIN; can't make out the rest. What is different?
there were two changes the number of letters became 32 instead of 43. and rules of wrighting changed, espesialy that concerned hard sign. On George's stove its well seen "принц.." and a parts of last letter-hard sign. Due to the new rules there shoudnt be anything there Being a manufacture I wont changed stamp because in one of 11 countries writing had changed a bit
To make things just a little bit more complicatetd: I have a lantern made by Radius, a Radius 119 from the beginning of the 1950ies, on wich is written the following in Russian: "ЕДИНСТВЕННЫЕ ФАБРИКАНТЫ НАСТОЯЩИХЪ АППАРАТОВЬ РАДИУСЬ", completely in capital letters. You can read the твёрдый знак (hard sign) as well as on the mentioned stove. But there is also an orthographical mistake, if I'm remembering my Russian lessons correctly: "АППАРАТОВЬ" is just the second case plural of "Аппарат" (device) and should be written without мягкий знак (soft sign) at the end. The мягкий знак at the end of "Радиус" isn't necessary as well… I think, they just didn't know how to speak and write Russian correctly, as well as we know it from user-manuals in several languages nowadays. Unfortunuately… It could have been a hint to the age of a device. Kind regards, Christian
I dont speak but a few words of Russian, but am facinated by both the language and the writing. This whole Hard sign and soft sign is completely alien to me, can it be explained in laymens' terms?
Hi! Well, it changes the sound of the consonantes, after which it is typed. It's hard to me to explain it - at least in English - but have a look at Wikipedia: soft sign and hard sign. I'm fascinated by the Russian language, the country and the culture as well. Therefore I learned the language at school, although I'm living in West-Germany, not in the former GDR. I'm still able to speak and read Russian a little, but not as well as I was. School was 20 years ago… And to make things not that off-topic, here is a photo I took from the fount of the lamp today: Kind regards, Christian
I speak no Russian, but I can transliterate Cyrillic easily enough, a useful thing even where one does not know the language, and one which folks can easily pick up. This makes Russian look much less strange to the Westerner, and enables phonetic reading. Thus PRINTS (Prince) for the stove name that has been discussed. Cyrillic is of course based upon Greek, and while I know no Greek either, I had to learn to recite the Greek alphabet "six times on a match" when I was a fraternity pledge (Theta Chi) at U of Cal Berkeley in 1966. This involved jumping up on a chair, striking a kitchen match, and reciting said alphabet six times before the flame reached one's fingers. This imprinted the Greek alphabet firmly in my mind forever, and I can still say it really fast! This knowlege in later years facilitated learning the Cyrillic alphabet. 8) I've only been to Russia once; we spent two weeks there in November of 1987 on a Finnair tour. This was of course the latter days of the Bolshevik regime, though we didn't know it was the latter days. Transliteration of Cyrillic was, naturally, very useful, especially for reading signs and maps. You could buy Moscow street maps with everything in the Latin alphabet, a thing which is entirely useless where everything "on the ground" is in Cyrillic! We saw many beautiful things, the most memorable of which was coming into Novgorod on a snowy evening, the Kremlin and its churches covered in fresh snow. A good time of year to go! It was a very interesting thing to have a Finnish guide throughout. Her remarks when the Intourist guides weren't around were most enlightening. She was a little jaundiced about what the Soviets had done with Viburi.....
Hi, I had the camera out today and took a photo of the lettering on the tank of an early (1930s or earlier) Svea No.1 stove; What do the experts say about the Russian on this model? Perhaps Sefa can tell is whether we have Ottoman Turkish or Arabic...That should help date this stove. Best Regards, Kerophile.
You mean this? It is Greek… Btw @ Ed: I tried your exercise with the match and the Greek alphabet this evening. Well, I must confess: you are the winner. After the ψ for the 5th time my fingers became too hot� Kind regards, Christian
Hi Christian, Thank you for the quick reply. Grrek you say....I don't think I have seen Greek on a stove before....but there again, in my ignorance I would have thought it was Russian. As for the match trick and the recitations of the Greek aphabet: You surely know that everything is bigger in the USA. That probably goes for their matches as well! Best Regards, Kerophile
Hi! Neither did I. And I'm a little astonished about it. Greek is spoken only in Greece, a rather small market. But your thoughts have nothing to do with ignorance, the alphabets are very closed to each other, some signs are just the same. The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek one. Hey, that's good news! Kind regards, Christian
Hi, this time we have a Primus No.7, a really large (7 pint) paraffin pressure stove dating from 1924 (coded N4): Best Regards, Kerophile.
Standard US wooden kitchen match, about 2 1/4 inches long. It's easy-- I did it for one of the grandkids a day or two ago. But then, I learned well! Per Diamond Match Co-- 2.32 inches, or 59 mm.
