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Plug vs. Plug — Which Nation's Socket Is Best?
CNETNate writes "Is the American mains socket really so much worse than the Italian design? And does the Italian socket fail at rivaling the sockets in British homes? This feature explores, in a not-at-all-parodic-and-anecdotal fashion, the designs, strengths and weaknesses of Earth's mains adapters. There is only one conclusion, and you're likely not to agree if you live in France. Or Italy. Or in fact most places." (For more plug pics and details, check out Wikipedia's list of the ones in current use.)
I did not agree with the tiny 10-page article that barely had enough substance for 1 physical paper.
It's worse than that. I hate to spoil the ending for you but he comes to the conclusion that the British outlet is the greatest with a 10 out of 10 score. Why? Safety features. Features like shuttering and built in fuses. Both of which are optional on American outlets as well -- I'm sure -- as they are on outlets around the world. Maybe they're standard in the UK but they're optional in the US. I'd rather have the option than even more regulation. Also, the picture for the US is ungrounded. I'm beginning to think this article was written by someone who's never really cared to understand the diversity of plugs in countries other than his own (which I would never use in the US and very rarely see). Nationalistic garbage is about all this amounts to. Yawn.
My work here is dung.
They also completely failed to mention sheer size. British mains plugs are fucking enormous. That might be fine for AC blowers and electric kettles, which are big anyway and draw a fair bit of current; but it is annoying and ridiculous for the ever growing crop of little tiny switchmode adapters that power the gizmos and gadgets of modern life.
Article summary (score out of 10):
10- UK
9 - Denmark
8 - Italy
2 - Australia
1 - USA (no surprise)
1 - Japan (surprise)
0 - EU
I suspect bias. I also suspect this article was meant to be humourous. BTW an American plug can handle 15 amps easily; it's how I run my spare heater.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I agree that plenty of devices in the U.S. don't use a ground pin, but I've rarely seen appliances with no ground. Have you really seen a refrigerator or a microwave or something with no ground pin?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And you know what? The number of times the average American has been shocked by his plugs: 0.
I read the internet for the articles.
In my experience a lot of brits don't even realize we have single phase 220v to most homes.
Thus they probably aren't aware that there are US 220v sockets and plugs to compare theirs with.
But without a built-in fuse and shutters in the outlet they'll still rate theirs as superior.
OTOH, considering how many times most people actually unplug their stove, water heater, or clothes dryer, I'd wager that statistically the US plug is the safer of the two.
Actually, the little security flap adds about $0.08 to the cost of a socket (about $1 retail given markup). The inline fuse is differnt from a GFI, and instead of allowing the device to die a horrible death and trigger the GFI, it protects the devices from surges in the first place. They use GFI in the breaker box (as the breakers in my new house here in the US also do and it's not the builkding standard in this state as opposed to the expensive GFI sokets I needed all over the place in the old house). Their inline fuse is cheap and simple.
For the cost of a box, outlet, and cover plate, the UK socket might cost $2 more than a US one. Its safer and also protects devices with an additional surge protection barrier (so you don't need a surge stip for every fracking outlet you have more than a lamp plugged into).
Further, because they use round connectors, not flat, it's far less likely you'll bend up a plug, and it's also harder to find household objects you could stick in the hole in the first place. It;s not exactly often i bend up a connetor real bad, but when ui had a dog it more more frequent, and more than once I've had to solder on a new endpiece, which is really a bitch to do btw without the proper tools.
I'm not condoning everyone rip out all their outlets, I'm simply suggesting all new outlets come with a cover and fuse starting now, and all appliances start coming with a newer, better connector (and an adapter to use an older outlet).
People might compain, but they made the same complaint years ago when we added the 3rd prong and people started needing adapters for those. We got over it, and will again.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
OTOH, 110 is far less likely to whack you on your ass if you DO get shocked!
Test your net with Netalyzr
God forbid safety comes before savings.
Why should safety vs savings be immune to a normal cost/benefit analysis?
How many people are significantly (or even mildly) injured due to the design of the standard US plug? How many fewer are injured with the UK plug? Now, how much does it cost a society (taking everything into account, from the cost a table lamp to the cost of a meal at a restaurant which uses appliances with these plugs) to mandate the use the UK plug over the US plug?
Safety over savings is a laudable goal, but taking it too far or removing personal responsibility (for example, by a totalitarian nanny state) can be just as detrimental as having no safety at all.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Well, it seems that BS1363 allows non-earthed plugs also, quoting from wikipedia:
"Moulded plugs for unearthed, double-insulated appliances may substitute this contact with a non-conductive plastic pin to open the shutter." So, should a fair assessment include non-grounded plugs British plugs also?
As a native of the US, I find the items you point out incomprehensible, but acceptable just due to familiarity. I would absolutely love UL and the NFPA (the non-governmental bodies that, in reality, sets most of the standards for these things in the USA) banning 2-prong plugs and outlets. 2-prong outlets have been effectively banned in new construction since 1962; I'm sorry, but if you have an old house you'll have to rewire or buy lots of adapters.
I'd love to have 220V coming out of the wall sockets as half the world does; it's unlikely to be more dangerous than the 120 we have now, and would allow for products with twice the power of currently available one (think vacuums, table saws, etc). Alternatively, products could have thinner cords - at half the amperage, the required wire diameter is smaller.
As far as light dimming, that's going to occur in Britain also if you plug in a 13 amp device. It's unavoidable, and driven by the current being drawn; the cords will get warm also. Of course, there won't be as many 13 amp devices - my 120 volt, 13 amp vacuum cleaner would become a 240 volt, 6.5 amp vacuum cleaner; the 6.5 amps is unlikely to dim the lights and unlikely to make a noticeable temperature difference to the wire.
But I just can't get over the size of that British plug. It's got to be bigger than the cellphone that my AC Adapter would be trying to charge. How about practicality - how often do the shutters on British outlets fail, jam, or break? /frank
And the worms ate into his brain.
The British people are strangely proud of the ungainly BS 1363 plug. No surprise at all that it won the comparison.
What is it with the Americans on here? The British people are not proud of their plugs, the British people take plugs for granted. It's not like there was a national vote on what plugs to use or anything.
To warp this into a issue of national pride is just wrong.
Ever been shocked by 110? No big deal. 220? You need protection.
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
Appliances don't have to use the earth ground pin if they're double-insulated.
Yes, you can buy adaptors to eliminate the earth pin, but they have a loop that needs to be connected to the outlet plate screw, which needs to be grounded. If you don't use that, and there's a problem, it's your own fault. However, many older houses don't have 3-prong outlets and the system has no earth ground connection, so there's not much you can do. What would you suggest, every 50+ year old house being rewired? We're already bankrupt.
As for accidental shocks, remember, this is only 110 (really 120) V here. It doesn't hurt much to get shocked if you're clumsy, as long as you're not wet (which is why kitchens and bathrooms are required to have GFCI for new construction). I imagine getting zapped with 220V is a much worse experience.
As for lights changing brightness, maybe you're living in an older house or something, because I don't see that. And for vacuum cleaners, yes it kinda sucks the cord gets warm, but not many things are like that. In the typical house, very few things use that much current (the things which use lots of power, like ovens, are already 220V and have their own circuits with huge aluminum cables). 220V is massive overkill for things like alarm clocks, small lamps, TVs, or even computers.
I don't see the advantage to fusing the plug versus a device with a replaceable fuse.
B.t.w. Christmas tree lights in the US have fused plugs with fuses on the hot and ground so that it can be plugged in upside down. Since there's no separate "device", just wires with bulbs, having the fuses in the plug makes sense.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Then how is it that Americans created Mac OS X while a Finn created Linux?
I think what you're looking for there is VMS, Unix, OS/2, etc etc etc vs 'a derivative work based on Minux, which is a workalike student version of ATT Unix'
Well, OK, maybe we Brits are a little over-proud of our plugs. A Polish engineer I know called them "an insult to electrical engineers".
But seriously, where is someone explaining why some other plug is superior? In my experience US plugs get bent pins, can be woefully insecure in their sockets (literally dropping out) and the ground-nonground mixing that goes on on powerstrips seems clearly dangerous.
So (excluding British plugs) which plug would you choose to champion? Any?
I know it's not comfortable to admit that the US version of X is not the best in the world, but if you had another option that you preferred, I'd be more convinced.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
I was going to just copy and paste in my older post titled "The UK plug is the nanny state run wild", but I can't find the damned thing.
The simple fact of the matter is that the pins on the US plug are so short that by the point it is far enough out of the socket to expose enough of the pins to touch them with your fingers, it's unplugged. No partially insulated pins or other wacky design contrivances are needed.
The UK plug appears to have originally been designed by someone who was laboring under the misunderstanding that they were designing a connector for welding equipment, not domestic appliances. It can safely carry 100A of current, if you replace the fuse with a solid link. Why? The plug contains a maximum 13A fuse and the ring main circuit in a UK home is limited to about 40A if I remember correctly. Why a 100A connector when it can only ever be supplied with 40A?
Shutters on the sockets are a very recent development in the US, and a probably just being copied from the UK for no other reason than shutter envy. There's no real demand for them, because Americans are somehow able to resist the temptation that apparently so often overcomes their British counterparts to stick things in the socket other than a plug.
When my family moved from the UK to the USA back in 1982, I thought the US plug was flimsy compared to the UK plugs I was used to. But, really, a Honda Civic looks flimsy compared to a Caterpillar bulldozer, but I know which one I'd buy to drive every day. (Yes, I have to get a car analogy in.)
A major advantage of the USA plug is that it's smaller - you can plug six appliances into a power strip and not have the power strip be the size of a house. If you have a laptop bag, the USA plug isn't some great big lump in the bag. The US plug is designed for its intended use, not designed to be safe even if being used by newborn babies to plug in their industrial welding equipment.
You might say, well, the US plug can't carry as much current for heavy loads. It's true that you can't get as much power through a single US plug as you can through a UK 13A plug, but that's because the voltage is higher. The US plug can carry 15A at 125V all day long. My wire feed welder works just fine plugged into a normal US 15A outlet - the plug doesn't even get warm.
Putting moderation advice in your
They sell 2-prong to 3-prong adapters because you typically attach the ground to the cover screw via a small prong or wire.
You're supposed to, but typically people don't. In fact, they overwhelmingly don't.
They do have the convenient habit of only coming in "flat surface mount" variety though, so the cord is already against the wall. Or at least, the cord sticks no further from the wall than the plug itself does. Most US plus for some reason think it is a great idea to stick far further out from the wall than even the huge British plug due to plugging in perpendicular. You can get the smaller "flush mount" plugs for some things in the US (usually extension cords, sometimes computer power cables) but they're then next to impossible to remove because they become so flat (a bonus for the larger British plug).
I also don't recall the British plugs having the "plug falls out of the wall due to the weight of the cord" problem that FAR TOO MANY US sockets do. It could just be the house we lived in when we were in England had new enough sockets that wasn't a problem -- I don't know for sure. I do know I've experienced the plug-falls-out problem in many, many houses and apartments in the US.
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A shock from an American outlet will very rarely kill you (I supposed it COULD, but I've never seen it). When I was a teenager I worked with a construction (drywall) company doing random labor tasks. Several times during things like remodels I and my brother (who also worked with me) would get assigned things like tearing out a ceiling and removing the insulation. Both of us accidentally grabbed a hot wire at least once. It hurts like a sumuma-bitch, but actually inside the home that level of current is the type of shock you can just walk off. A 5-10 minute break and we were back to work.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I'd rather have the option than even more regulation.
How can you object to something that improves safety and comes with no inconvenience whatsoever?
I'm no electrician
Thank goodness for that!
Maybe it's just me, but at a certain point I WANT the plug to come out of the socket. I know I can't be the only person in the world who's tripped over a cord sometime over another, and the plug just yanking out of the socket is a lot better than the actual wire popping or the outlet coming out of the wall. It's the real-world equivalent of a fuse - when something is obviously wrong make the system break at the safest and most convenient point rather than somewhere random.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The falling out of the wall problem isn't the most alarming issue with US plugs. The falling slightly out, just far enough that the connection is still (poorly) made and you get sparks flying when you turn the device on problem is. How anyone could defend this design is beyond me.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I've used power plugs in a bunch of different countries. Most have their advantages and disadvantages. US is small, Australia it's clear which direction you plug it in, Europe has some good safety features... but the british plug has nothing going for it. It's big and ugly, and when you put two on the wall next to each other, you can't work out which way is up. The authors are retarded.
So, let's take a 100 per cent objective* look at the plugs and plug sockets of the world"
Where the attached footnote read
*Objectivity in this sentence has a one-off, government-approved change in definition. Its meaning here, and only here, is the exact opposite of what it usually means.
I'm pretty sure the article was not meant as a hard-headed, detailed comparison of different plug styles. Of course, after reading that, and seeing that it was a 10 page article with approximately 2 sentences per page, I declined to read the rest of the article.
Fuse? Who needs that when the entire house is wired with circuit breakers. Fast enough to save your life if you drop the hairdryer into the bathtub.
Because the fuse trips at 2 to 13 amps and the circuit breaker will be way higher?
Then how is it that Americans created Mac OS X while a Finn created Linux?
A computer scientist created Mac OS X and a computer scientist created Linux. That fact that one is a Finnish and one is an American had nothing to do with it.
The Swiss design is OK. it's compatible with European sockets which is nice. I still prefer the British design though.
The main problem is that for some reason plugs often fail to easily go into sockets. I don't know why. This is a problem I had exactly never in the UK but I frequently have to wiggle the plug around to make it go in.
I like useless articles like this sometimes. This one gets the electrical nuts out of the woodwork and I start learning things that I'd normally have no reason to go out and look, but are interesting nonetheless.
He's American.
Symmetry and polarization aren't enemies.
Look at a 1/4" stereo jack. Sleeve, ring, tip. -> ground, neutral, hot.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Its because Americans are reflexively proud of everything with a US flag stamped on it, yet at the same time are culturally unable to make a better, standardised design widespread.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Perhaps you should read it. But get yourself a sense of humour first.
1) The European socket has a plastic outside cone for insulation. If the cable is partially unplugged, you cannot touch it with your fingers. The British version has nothing.
Except Insulated pins
2) The European socket allows you to plug the cables upside down (which is extremely helpful in certain situations).
I've never need to do this. I don't think I've ever seen a European plug inverted either. Can't be that useful.
Honestly, the european plug is fine. So's the UK style. The article was stupid, but it's equally stupid getting upset over it.
Other way around, I believe.
Building code requiring it came first.
Bank started requiring it later to make sure the building is up to code.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
That "current UK tech" *is* from 50 years ago - that's how our plugs have been for a very long time - since 1946 in fact. So 63 years.
We also have RCDs on our circuits in addition to fuses - Even the ancient house I live in has an RCD protecting the mains sockets and the light circuits.
So (excluding British plugs) which plug would you choose to champion? Any?
Of those that I've used personally - Soviet, Euro, Australian/NZ, and North American - I liked the southern one most, strictly on the basis of convenience. It has 3 asymmetric pins, so you can grab it and plug it in correctly in one try without even looking at it, a feat I couldn't repeat with any other design. Plus, having a power switch on every plug is both handy and a good safety feature (and the switches normally also glow when turned on, so if you keep one that way you can find it in the dark).
Looking at pictures for British plug, it seems that its 3 pins are in a similar configuration, but there's no switch or glowing LED.
Not only that, they lauded the Italian plugs for handling "up to 10 or even 16 amps". Any standard American plug will do 15, and for a couple of dimes more, you can get one that will do 20 amps.
They deride the American plug because an ungrounded (2-prong) plug can make the cord easy to pull out, laud the 3-pronged European plugs for being harder to pull out... but ignore 3-pronged (grounded) American plugs.
The shuttering that they say makes UK plugs better... is now mandatory in the USA.
I agree on the "nationalistic garbage" stuff. Maybe there's a bit of ignorance mixed in, but still... he just wanted to gripe about the Americans.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
So if an adult doesn't replace the worn out receptacles (a problem which is amusingly alien to a UK reader, by the way) then their 4 year old child 'deserves' to be fatally electrocuted? Why don't you think before you bash your fists on the keyboard next time?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
But kids will happily get their hands on pens, paper clips, random tools (screwdriver?), forks, tweezers, keys and coins. In fact, you would be amazed what kids get their hands on in the course of 30 seconds.
"US plugs are safer because they only carry 110v. That, in and of itself, makes US wiring safer. 220v is much more deadly than 110v"
It makes no difference, both voltages are high enough to kill.
"I have grabbed live wires at a plug a few times in my life, and it just jolts your arm a little bit."
You can do the same thing with 220-240v with no issues in the same circumstances as 110v.
ie: keep one hand behind your back, and prevent even an accidental touch from creating a circuit across your chest. And make sure you touch things such that contracting muscles will pull you away from the current.
I know of several people that have had a hand zapped by 240v, and you'll find a lot of tv repairman that have been zapped by far worse.
It's the current that kills, the voltage just needs to be high enough to overcome the resistance of your skin, and even 110v is more than enough for this.
"Bottom line, I am seriously not worried one bit about grabbing live outlet lines. It hurts a little, so I don't do it for fun, but I'm really not worried about dying or anything."
You are ignorant or stupid I'm not sure which. It is dangerous, the fact that you have not yet been killed doesn't mean you won't be.
8 fast loading pages with an extremely funny and often quite lengthy paragraph or two on each, plus a picture of what each page is talking about. Not eprfect, but well worth the clicks.
I live in a country in which sockets may either be the current British square pin type, or the old British round pin type. Appliances may come with almost any type of plug: things that do not need an earth usually come with a two pin round pin plug, but you may find almost anything: I have the French German hybrid type, Australian and others.
You get the same variety on UPS sockets. Getting everything to plug in can be fun, if you are not careful what you buy.
Obviously people use adaptors a lot, and routinely put pens (I find chopsticks better, though) into three pin sockets to get two pin plugs in. Unfortunately the brand of adaptor most commonly available, although very cheap, has a tendency to short out and melt.
I forgot to say: we actually use two types of round pin plug, because the smaller type cannot carry enough current for many devices (oven, microwave ovens, air-conditioners...), so there is a bigger type for them.
Having lived with all of the above I agree with the conclusion that the British square pin plugs are the best.
From the stats I can find, UK deaths by electrical outlets are .486 per 100,000 and US rates are .015 per 100,000, more than an order of magnitude safer, even without massive numbers of safety features.
Does that include death by fires stared by electrical faults? I don't know the statistics, but anecdotally, household fires are alarmingly more common in the US than anywhere else I've lived.
... and then they built the supercollider.