1950s German appliance wiring colour codes

[Tony Polson]

Thanks Andy. You're right, the red is definitely the earth. The red wire is clearly earthed to the metal chassis of the projector.

There is an in-line switch in the cable so I thought I would open it up to see which of the other colour wires was switched, implying that it would be the live wire. The good news was that the red wire was connected to a chromed brass plate around the bakelite switch, further confirming that it is the earth, and that one conductor was switched and the other not. So far so good.

Unfortunately the bad news is that the unswitched conductor is connected to the black wire at one end of the switch and the grey wire at the other. This presumably didn't matter in Germany as the plug could be inserted either way up. But it matters here, so I will borrow a multimeter and check which colour wire is the live feed to the lamp.

Thanks to everyone who replied.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So you don't think unified wiring colours throughout the EU a good idea?

But if you did how then do you get round the fact the that Germany apparently thought red the best colour for a safety wire while the UK chose green? Red may mean danger in most countries, but then the 'dangerous' wire to get wrong on a three wire appliance is the earth - not the other two. And don't let's forget red is the least visible colour to man in general - and even more so if you're partially colour blind. So it wasn't chosen with science but merely became the convention - why, I don't know. And I'd guess the same with threads and clocks.

Strange, given the main idea of the original 'common market' was to prevent wars between the likely members which had occurred rather too frequently in the past.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

As would a unified currency - if it weren't for big business making money out of different ones.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

There you go. What's 'logical' to one isn't to another.

Most earth varies around the brown end of the colour scale - certainly not green. Of course other English speaking countries call the safety connection 'ground'. Dunno what it's called in other languages.

[Bob Mannix]

Well in that case the terminal should be marked "Grass" (to be instictive). Had not brown been snaffled for live it would have been just as instinctive for earth. Black is more instinctive for neutral and red is for danger innit?

[Bob Mannix]

Ah he did say "righty-tighty, lefty loosey" which (sort of) covers taps but just shows that the reminders are contradictory so it's all bockolls.

[Huge]

That is wrong in *so* many ways ...

The main resisters were National Governments who didn't want to lose control of their economies.

Most multinationals would be glad to see the back of national currencies.

[mike]

"MB" wrote in news:eg2u1b$jr6$00$ [e-mail]:

How come the Germans haven't joined in the "unified" colour coding then?

Are all European nations not so equal?

mike

[Guy King]

The message from Tony Polson contains these words:

If you're not doing a museum quality restoration I'd be tempted to replace the mains lead completely with a modern standard one so some other poor sod doesn't come unstuck at a later date.

[Andy Hall]

Mainly true apart from currency traders and the exchange places in the airports.

Still, there's always John 2: 13-16.......

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They might be - but in the UK big business means the financial institutions.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

For permanent wiring I'd guess they have recently - same as us.

[Huge]

There wasn't much money to be made in European FX anyway, and the traders didn't seem *that* bothered. And the exchange places in airports are shysters anyhow. Besides, retail is less than 2% of the FX market.

[Huge]

Intraeuropean FX wasn't that big a business.

[Adam Funk]

Copper-coloured wire with a green cover and reddish-brown dirt with a green cover --- the comparison makes sense to me.

Of course 2/3 of the earth is covered with water, but I don't recommend this as an electrical technique.

Green, grass, ground.

;-)

[Andy Wade]

The have so far as flexible cord colours are concerned. TTBOMK that's been fully harmonised since around 1970. Harmonisation of colours for fixed wiring has taken much longer and until earlier this year the UK was odd-man-out in allowing black for neutral. The situation now is that all EU member states use blue for neutral and green/yellow for protective earth. The colours for the three "live" phases varies, with some states using three browns, some three blacks and some brown for L1 and two blacks for L2 and L3. Rather oddly Germany uses black, brown, black for L1, L2, L3 respectively and thus black for the "live" in single-phase installations.

One reason for the delay in the UK coming into line was that our national standards committee wanted to preserve the use of three distinct phase colours, so that the phase sequence was clear from the wiring colours alone. As we all know they succeeded and BS 7671 now requires brown, black, grey.

There's a summary of phase colours by country in this document:

[Brian Sharrock]

It might be, it might not be .... however it's policy. {I recall, dimly, seeing an advert for a Brussels job for which I (IMHO) was qualified ... the application form had a statement to the effect ; "Applicants born before dd/mm/yyyy will not be considered", I mentioned it en-passant to my MP who shrugged with a 'c'est le vie', some might say Gallic, gesture!}

Votre ami

[Brian Sharrock]

Consider; the UNO (or as the francophone say; ONU) utilises blue as the ground for its flag; signifying neutrality. Can one assume that the significance eluded you?

[mike]

Andy Wade wrote in news:45251957$0$12431$ [e-mail]:

Ow - a bit more to it than I'd realised Thanx

mike