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If we have "Plug Tops" why don't we have "Socket Bottoms"?

As per the Subject really. This expression "Plug Tops" has puzzled me for years.


I can understand confusion with D-Sub Connectors where the Plug has a Female Body and Male Pins and vice-versa. Trying to describe a D-Sub Gender Changer is like explaining the Rules of Cricket:-

"You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game."


Clive

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  • davidwalker2:


    . . .

    Of course it can be more complicated if the connector has both pins and receptacles, but again I understand the convention is the majority prevails (two pins one receptacle is a plug).


    David




     

    Ah, we may be getting somewhere now! The (now obsolete) Wylex 13 A plug system used to have something like that. A 13 A plug could have sockets into which you could plug in a smaller plug, say 5 A. The pins were flat but slightly thinner, so that they would plug either directly into the 13 A socket or into the socket of a 13 A plug. This plug could have sockets to take a 2 A plug with even thinner pins. It had no sockets so could rightly be called a plug top. It was at the top of the (rather unwieldy) pile!

    https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Wylex1.html
Reply

  • davidwalker2:


    . . .

    Of course it can be more complicated if the connector has both pins and receptacles, but again I understand the convention is the majority prevails (two pins one receptacle is a plug).


    David




     

    Ah, we may be getting somewhere now! The (now obsolete) Wylex 13 A plug system used to have something like that. A 13 A plug could have sockets into which you could plug in a smaller plug, say 5 A. The pins were flat but slightly thinner, so that they would plug either directly into the 13 A socket or into the socket of a 13 A plug. This plug could have sockets to take a 2 A plug with even thinner pins. It had no sockets so could rightly be called a plug top. It was at the top of the (rather unwieldy) pile!

    https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Wylex1.html
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