It's NOT. This is probably a 1940's or 50's fan. No ground wire to the outlet. Just the old 2 prong plugs which is all that was used on that old stuff. When I get a box of stuff at those auctions for a couple bucks, I dont waste too much time fixing the bad stuff unless it's really valuable. I really did not need another fan anyhow, but there were lots of other goodies in the box. I always test all the stuff as soon as I get home and discard the bad stuff so it's not laying around.
There were more electricution deaths in the past. Much of that old stuff was more dangerous than the newer stuff. I cant begin to count the number of times I got shocked when I was younger (in the 60's and
70's). Most of the time people are not killed, just shocked.... It was leakage, not direct short in most instances...... Those old metal encased power tools, as well as "hot chassis" radios and tvs were the worst. I'd say the most shocks I got when I was younger were from the old metal electric drills. Now they are plastic cased, have 3 prong plugs or polarized plugs. Much safer.... Electricity is much safer these days.
I had an old tube type short wave radio when I was a kid. I ran a long wire out the house to garage for an antenna. That radio had a "hot chassis" In other words, if the plug was in one way, the chassis was direct to the 120VAC. If reversed, it was hooked to the neutral. So one day I had it turned on and connected the antenna wire, then was going to connect the ground wire (shortwave antennas need a ground). As I connected this ground wire, the thin wire literally burned off the insulation and left a nasty burn on my hand. The house filled with smoke and my dad got really pissed and was going to throw the radio away. After he calmed down he called his brother (my uncle), who was an electrician. He installed a polarized grounded plug on my radio, and we never had another problem with it. The days of having to reverse the plug are no longer an issue.
Makes sense to me...I've encountered more than enough cases of GFCI breakers tripping because of cruddy conditions along the circuit to become an advocate of just using GFCI outlets.
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