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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.
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.
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 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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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.
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He's American.