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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

And as seen here (http://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/j...) the socket is indented into the wall so less of the cable protrudes beyond the flat surface of the wall.

That's not always the case - but it frequently is, and yes, does make the direction of the cable even less of an issue!

> 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.

Relevant example from Iceland http://www.choishine.com/port_projects/landsnet/iceland.html

You're aware that's not real, right?

Uh, of course I am... now. I wasn't.

"why swiss music is... oh well..."

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.

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.

Better is a different thing from elegant, though.

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.

That's when you pull the plug out of the socket.

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.

So are the British plugs. Perhaps pulling the cord out should be called an extreme failure mode?

(It was probably more useful 20 or more years ago, before moulded plugs were common.)

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.

Right, that's what I meant (i.e. the earth wire sticking out of cable end is "unnecessary long" if it is the same length as L/N).

However, it is very unusual if the cable comes loose from the plug casing.

I'm not really a plug fan, but I did find this interesting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q

It is, thanks - I didn't know about the additional leeway of the ground cable thats there by design, simple but smart.

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.

EU plugs also come in variants that point downwards, without sticking out 3 extra centimeters.

See http://www.netonnet.se/ItemImages/koppla-och-anslut/el/el-ka... and http://media.conrad.com/medias/global/ce/9000_9999/9400/9440... The first one there is the most common plug here actually.

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!

You're right, when MrBuddyCasino said "I think this design is better than that design", he clearly meant "we should get rid of that design".

Chinese win. Hands down. You can plug nearly anything in to them. http://imgur.com/dgT2mjk

Of course, there's no guarantee what your reward will be, and they maybe aren't the safest.

Very rarely, I miss having reaction faces on HN. Here is a Chinese wall socket, quite a looker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Chin...

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