They're ugly as hell, and insanely painful if you tread on them, but UK plugs are a bastion of good engineering.
Things like not being able to stick things into the line/neutral holes unless the ground pin (which is longer) is inserted make them very safe, and the plastic lower part of the line/neutral pins to stop you accidentally touching something that will have current running through it until the plug is safely inserted is inspired.
I know Britons love their plugs, and I have never quite understood why. They look brutish, clunky and over-engineered. The opposite of elegant.
The reason why they have fuses is so you can use ring circuits, which saves copper compared to the usual radial wiring. So its just about saving a little money.
Everyone now gets to state his favourite plug type. Bring it on!
Mine is the swiss Type J (http://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/j...). Its safe, not an eyesore and very space efficient. Its safe against voltage reversal, usually has a protective shroud and the ground pin is contacting first. Well engineered, very swiss like.
Does anyone actually care that their plugs are elegant? In any case, your Type J is missing the fact that in the UK, the cables point down towards the floor rather than sticking out, keeping them flush with the wall and often allowing you to hide the plugs behind things.
> Does anyone actually care that their plugs are elegant?
Some people do, I think its an expression of culture. Its hard not to notice that the swiss and the nordic countries (especially Sweden and Norway) value a certain aesthetics. This expresses itself in many things, ranging from architecture to product design, art and the design of public spaces.
There is a reason swiss typography was big, and why nordic design is appreciated all over the world. It could only emerge from these cultural surroundings, its a mindset.
That plug is an expression of british engineering values. Its certainly a very well designed plug, but I also believe the reason why swiss and nordic products are more popular than british ones is that they are made with a different approach.
Probably those same values are also the reason why british music is so great, and why swiss music is... oh well, have you ever listened to mundart-rock? So I'm not saying X is better than Y, there are trade-offs involved.
Reminds me of a favorite recording of Dizzy Gillespie playing with his band at Montreux. It's a pretty reserved audience, and Dizzy, who was renowned for having a lively interchange with his audiences, said while introducing vibe player Milt Jackson:
"So far, you are a typical Swiss audience. Of course, a Swiss audience might not be the greatest audience in the world. But they will do until the real thing comes along."
The last was said mirthfully, pausing to emphasize each word, and the audience chuckles good-naturedly, knowing their limitations.
Swiss person here. The total length of the "plug" part of a swiss plug is actually roundabout the same as the width of a british plug. They fit just fine behind couches, shelves, etc.
of course. Did you miss the article yesterday about Macbook going with USB-C? Apple has made bank on just getting people to buy better plugs and cables (USB, Magsafe, Lightning connector, etc.). People also spend tons of money to hide cables when mounting TV screens.
Part of the niceness of the UK plug is that if you pull the cable right out of the housing, the internals disconnect in the safest order. The plug comparison sites I've found don't discuss the internals of the plugs much; does anyone know how other plug types approach this (or do they just ignore it)?
Looking at plugs, I suspect that many get round this by making the housing of the plug much more firmly attached to the cable.
They don't ignore it; Schuko (CEE 7/3) plugs also keep earth connected while live and neutral pins are pulled out. Same is true for the French (CEE 7/5) and Danish (107-2-D1) designs.
OP is talking about the failure mode when you pull the cable out of the plug - the live and neutral cables are shorter and tighter and will fail first, leaving the earth wire to fail last.
I didn't quite understand the whole concept. The idea in Schuko plugs is that you cannot pull the cable out of the plug. It's totally fixed (either inside solid plastic, or attached with a strain relief that fixes it).
edit: now that I think of it, Schuko plugs of the install-yourself kind where you can attach cable with a screwdriver (not solid plastic with the cable) are done so that the earth cable is longer than L/N are inside the casing.
Most combination Schuko/French plugs I've seen recently are even designed in such way that when all wires are same length then the PE one has larger slack inside the plug.
I think they're elegant. The cable points downwards rather than just outwards like most others (US/EU). They have a nice finished edge that's easy to grip rather than a moulded piece of angled plastic.
Norwegian plugs must be the UK plug's arch enemy, not grounded until the very last, 2 pins (the ground is on either side of the casing) and the sockets are at 0, 45 or 90 degrees (leading directly to exclamations of "Fuuck!" from this Brit.
What fuse/circuit breaker do you put in the fuse panel with radial wiring? It's got to cope with the largest appliance you'll put on that circuit. With British plugs, a low-current device such as a lamp should have a 3 amp fuse, so it blows before the thinner 5A-rated wiring to the lamp melts.
The problem with British plugs though is the rectangular pins. Mechanically, it's simpler to get a good large contact surface area with a circular pin in a circular socket. You do sometimes come across UK sockets which have been slightly damaged and get hot because the contact resistance is no longer negligible.
You're right. We should change an established, proven design to make it prettier. I don't understand why it's taken so long for someone to speak out. Stop the presses!
Very safe theoretically, but in practice (with Malaysian UK-type plugs, full disclosure) I've seen people casually shove pens and even metal spoons in the ground to force the socket to accept their ungrounded laptop plug.
I have done that, when I was young and stupid and didn't have a UK compatible plug. I have also witnessed a many people doing it.
You can also trick it by doing a sort of dance with te plug where you partially force in the ground, then one live, then you spin it and put the other one in.
The day we have USB wall sockets can't come soon enough.
I would have to tell my phone not to believe everything some house computer (on Earth or Bespin) tells it. At least with USB, my phone is less likely to mistake the power plug for the data plug, because it's all the same.
> Things like not being able to stick things into the line/neutral holes unless the ground pin (which is longer) is inserted make them very safe, and the plastic lower part of the line/neutral pins to stop you accidentally touching something that will have current running through it until the plug is safely inserted is inspired.
Same in Australia, of course you can still go off an buy and Apple Laptop charger with no ground.
I don't know why you singled out the MacBook charger.
The relevant Australian Standard (AS/NZ 3820, I think?) tells you an electrical appliance doesn't need to have an earth pin if it's double insulated, which the MacBook charger, and the stick blender in my kitchen, amongst others, are.
Source: I'm certified for Electrical Test & Tag in Australia.
We used to use Schuko plugs here in Ireland, but switched to type G plugs for convenience and trade reasons back in the '60s. I think my grandparents' house still had some Schuko sockets about the place.
Personally, I'm not too bothered either way. I don't find either any more or less annoying as they're both pretty bulky, unless you're using Europlugs, which lack most of the benefits of Schuko plugs.
Still nothing compares in its awfulness to North American plugs. Aussie plugs are similar, but they had the good sense to tilt the prongs at an angle to give the plug better mechanical stability.
I consider Schuko plugs to fall somewhere between the british and the swiss plug. It certainly is a little too big for what it does, and also hard to unplug. That 16A rating is nice, though.
Schuko plugs are a pain in the ass, because more often then not they require brute force to unplug them (or even just plug them in). Also doesn't help the lifespan of powerstrips.
Being able to plug them in ungrounded Euro sockets is handy, but also makes them less safe.
This is because Post-WW2 UK houses were wired as one giant ring circuit, while in the rest of the world there generally was a fuseboard with every fused circuit connected to a few sockets. This saves wire (copper) but requires every plug to have a fuse.
I do not now if modern UK homes are still wired like this.
In modern times the individual fuse still makes it safer, but it is also one of the reasons UK plugs are so large and clunky.
They definitely shouldn't be.... IANA electrician, but as far as I am aware UK regulations require separate power and lighting circuits and a proper distribution board with RCBs.
And while our plugs may be clunky, I kind of prefer them to the wobbly, spark emitting two-pin plugs that I seem to come across in the US...
