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International plugs and sockets

Chris Pearson
As we leave the EU, with all its standardization, I am bound to wonder why plugs and sockets have not been subject to this process. It isn't even that we have our funny square pins and the rest have round ones. Type C (2 pin) is common, but earthed plugs are mostly type E or F. IEC site.


Oh well, too late now!
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    They sort of have - having a pin or a side-contact for earthing has become pretty much standard accross Europe now, as has the voltage. Several local variants have been phased out.

    However the only folk really using the universal international plug are Brazil, and they use intermatable plugs on 2 voltages.

    The 2 pin europlug with the thinner and bent inwards  springy pins fits all, including ours if you find something to open the shutters first.
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    As we leave the EU, with all its standardization



    Electrical standardisation is driven by CENELEC rather than the EU - and our membership of CENELEC remains intact - so I doubt we'll see much difference there.


    I've a feeing South Africa is adopting the N type too.


    I'm still a bit puzzled why they felt the need to invent something completely new - rather than just adopting say that 16A version of IEC 320 which is already used worldwide as appliance connectors and shuttered versions of outlets are available.


      - Andy.
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    At long last we are free of the EU and all its crap YAY
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    At long last we are free of the EU and all its crap YAY



    Not quite - we're still subject to all the EU rules, all we've done so far is loose having a say in making them..

       - Andy.
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    Kelly Marie:

    At long last we are free of the EU and all its crap YAY




    Yes, feel free to use the German E, as opposed to nasty French/Latin T for earth on all your paperwork.

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    Il use an English E as I'm allowed too
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    Are you going to change the symbol "I" for current as well - after all that's another French invention (by Monsieur André-Marie Ampère) - perhaps to the more obvious (to Anglo Saxons) "C"? (Although you might then have to come up  with something different for all those correction factors...)

    And then "U" for voltage/potential difference (allegedly from the German Unterschied - although that might be approcryphal) (but not to "v" as that's already been bagged for velocity)


    And as for the Greek Ω, λ and Δ...


       - Andy.
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    You can't have C for current - we need it for Capacitance.

    you can't have E for earth either, we need E for Energy.

    Regarding 'U' instead of V for voltage, the German readers among us may like this dokument    However,  for those that do not, I can translate that the suggestion is that they are not sure but maybe the  U is from the latin ' urgere '  - pressure, in English you get the word  'urgency'  from this root. Note that commonly in German electrical texts,  U is a dc voltage, and u is an AC one.
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    I suppose some might be expecting us to follow the lead of those pathetic "Metric Martyrs" we used to hear so much about some years ago. Complete cranks methinks. So we might have imperial Volts, Amps and Ohms etc etc rather than the S.I. brand.

    Hmm I`ll have to get some Brexit Calibrated Test Gear now!
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    I'm not decrying BS 1363, but it's worth remembering the following:


    (a) The design leads to a rather heavy, clunky plug, which has a habit of falling "pins up", and I'm sure others have had the "treading on Lego" experience with one. Still, that's why slippers were invented!


    (b) The reason it leads to a clunky design is that the plug has a fuse, which gets warm in use, and the heat needs to be dealt with (end of physics lesson).


    (c) We can't do away with the fuse whilst we still retain ring final circuits.


    (d) So, perhaps we keep BS 1363 in its current form for the time being. Go back to (a) and start again

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