Prompted by Joe's post in another area.

Symbols are becoming much more common these days, under the guise that they provide an international means of communicating basic information.

How useful do you feel that symbols really are though? A few basic symbols are pretty obvious, but beyond that, their meaning might be clear only to someone who has been taught that meaning. It's easy for somebody who has grown up with a certain symbol to believe that its meaning is obvious to the whole world.

Here's a non-electrical example of some road signs:
[Linked Image from members.aol.com]

O.K., now all of you in Continental Europe will understand this combination of road-signs perfectly.

But what about our North American friends? Can you name all the messages being given by this assortment of signs in France?



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-01-2003).]