Old-style plug sockets

In Italy, the 2A ones are the telephone outlet -- ouch! I'm sure someone somewhere must have plugged an Italian phone into a 240V 2A outlet...

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel
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ah, Clix plugs. The wires were pushed under the folded pins, and screwing the top on pressed the pins onto the wires. no cordgrip. I think theyre famous for worrying people.

hospital plug?

not heard of those before.

NT

Reply to
N. Thornton

You ain't wrong there about worrying people. When I was about 14, I plugged one in once that was connected to our table lamp ontop of the small cupboard next to the chimney breat and had to go to hospital suffering from severe burns to my hand. Letheal things. Dad soon got rid of those

-- troubleinstore

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Reply to
troubleinstore

Later versions had a cover secured by a screw and a decent cord grip. Which of course sort of defeated the idea of being able to fit one without tools.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

That's the ones. They sometimes tended to loose their grip in the sockets unless you prised the split ends of the pins apart a bit from time to time. I think they might have had a very rudimentary attempt at a cord grip in the form of a lump in the centre of the bakelite base that pressed against the hole in the cap, but the caps didn't always stay on tight.

Reply to
Mike Clarke

You could also get plugs that would fit a bayonet light socket and then a Y-shaped adaptor for it and the bulb

At one time, these were popular as a way to connect the iron.

No earth of course......

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

The dreadful 'Clix' was not the only sort of 5 A plug with a top that could be unscrewed by hand. I still have some WG (Ward & Goldtone) brand ones I bought from Woolworth's as a kid, and which had a similar feature. These at least used screws to hold the wires in place :-). Another tendency of the Clix plug was for strands of wire to free themselves from the pins over time and eventually cause a short-circuit when you moved the flex - nice.

That's the Wylex design that was a serious alternative contender to the

13 A 'square pin plug' (as people called it then) in the late 1940s for use with the new ring circuit system. Yes there were stackable versions and I believe they were widely used in government scientific establishments at one time. Who first designed what we now know as the BS 1363 plug and why it was chosen over the Wylex versions are questions I've never seen answered - although a good guess might be that it was considerably cheaper to produce than the Wylex.
Reply to
Andy Wade

"Andy Hall" wrote | You could also get plugs that would fit a bayonet light socket | and then a Y-shaped adaptor for it and the bulb

I remember them being used for christmas lights at kindergarten. We all made little paper lanterns to fit over the hot electric bulbs...

| At one time, these were popular as a way to connect the iron. | No earth of course......

Somewhere I have a lovely advertisement advocating their use in the bathroom for the electrically heated shaving mug.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

yep, those were still being sold till, what, 70 or 71. Used long after of course. They gave the added features of:

  • a dangling cord to run into (sometimes the plugs were held by string)
  • flex draping over the lightbulb
  • lots of mechanical loading on the light fitting flex, which of course often had no effective cord grip
  • making sure the user would regularly handle the live perished rubber cord on the light socket
  • and when you did get caught up in the wires, while standing on a chair and reaching up, you'd pull on the whole thing, the light would go out, and youd grab hold of the hot bulb to try to steady yourself in the sudden darkness.

Other than that they were quite a clever idea.

Regards, NT

Reply to
N. Thornton

The hard plastic ones at least had a bit of resistance to coming undone, and real screws for the wires. The Clixes (I had) were made of soft plastic, and came undone regularly, leaving eseentially nothing holding the wires to the pins. But even compared to Clixes I've seen worse, occasionally, wooden mains plugs and adaptors that make Clixes look reassuring. Possibly going all the way back to the 20s or 30s.

I expect price ruled. But of course that does make our present plug an odd choice, as it is remarkably inefficient from a material use point of view. Compare to the standard american plug for example.

regards, NT

Reply to
N. Thornton

They were all killed off sometime around 70/71 when it became illegal to sell electrical fittings which didn't conform to a relevant British Standard.

Yes, somewhere in a junk box, I still have one of the ones with string to stop the plug falling away.

although in fairness the rubber flex could withstand higher temperature than today's PVC.

Whilst the rubber might be perished now, that's actually very much less likely back then.

and kiss goodbye to your lath and plaster ceiling, literally (at least the plaster part of it), as it passes you on the way down...

I still have a baynet plug, which gets used annually to plug some decorations into a lampholder instead of one of the regular bulbs.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

it could, but non-rubber was in widespread use too. If your chosen item had a plastic cord, it was uhoh very quickly.

With rubber it just made it hard and brittle, and led to bare wires being exposed fairly quickly.

I though badly perished rubber installs were widespread then, but I could be mistook I guess. Seemed like bare wires on lampholders was common. Along with round bakelite switches, round pin sockets, threaded conduit, bare heater elements, and melting socket wiring. Oh and homemade adaptors to enable bigger round pin plugs to be plugged into lower rated sockets.

ha, not seen that before!

Regards, NT

Reply to
N. Thornton

15A ones are still very widely used in the theater now. We have fusing at one point (at the dimmers) for each circuit and fuses per plug etc would be a total nightmare!

About the only manurfacturer for them is Duraplug. Plugs are around £3.50ea and the trailing sockets £5.

Tim..

Reply to
Tim (Remove NOSPAM.

TLC list 'ordinary' plastic types at 85p plus VAT.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Slightly later than that I think. The big change was the coming of "Council Directive of 19 February 1973 on the harmonization of the laws of Member States relating to electrical equipment designed for use within certain voltage limits (73/23/EEC)" - generally known as the low-voltage directive (LVD). The UK implementation was the Electrical Equipment Safety Regulations of 1973, subsequently revised in 1975, 1989 and 1994.

Reply to
Andy Wade

The 70/71 date is because I changed schools at that time, and I happen to recall all these strange adapters vanished about the same time. Maybe it was in anticipation of the legal changes?

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Was that the same set of regulations that changed the colour code for non hard wired cable ?

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

No, that happened during 1970. The UK legislation was the Electrical Appliances (Colour Code) Regulations 1969 (SI 1969/310).

Reply to
Andy Wade

Could well be. As another poster has reminded us the colour code changes also came in before the LVD.

Reply to
Andy Wade

There was a much more serious problem. Mars bars went up from 4d to

4p in about three months......

Then they announced (with a fanfare) their new size.

It was smaller.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

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