A universal plug socket... at last?

Three pins. Two pins. Slanting pins. Straight. Circular. In a world where there is no global standard for plug design, taking electrical items abroad can be fraught with difficulties. But now a solution may be at hand - and already in use in China.

I have to report a minor breakthrough in the great power play between nations, and a very pleasant one at that.

Any global voyager burdened by electrical equipment will have been hugely frustrated by the rabid protectionism of the international electrical plug and socket industry.

It is almost as insistent a badge of nationhood as having your own national airline: an electrical plug that will fit only into an electrical socket designed by an intricate-minded national to be utterly impervious to other countries' plugs.

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Thus we have flimsy American two-pin sockets which are sometimes splayed in other countries. Two round pins in Europe, with German ones apparently minutely further apart than in France to frustrate the electric shaver.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18266022

Now it happens....bloody typical....where was this 4 years ago when I moved and had to sell or donate all my electrical stuff and buy new or purchase expensive and totally useless transformers? ??? Grrrrrr could have saved a fortune! Bah

Cass wrote:Now it happens....bloody typical....where was this 4 years ago when I moved and had to sell or donate all my electrical stuff and buy new or purchase expensive and totally useless transformers? ??? Grrrrrr could have saved a fortune! Bah

Murphy's Law. It never fails

wyatt1 wrote:

Murphy's Law. It never fails

Well tell Murphy to stick it

Cass wrote:

Well tell Murphy to stick it

You mean 'in a socket' of course