Just what we're used to I guess. C-H and Tex grew up with red=ground, so I imagine our old code seems as strange to them as blue for neutral seemed to us at first.
By the way, on the positive/negative colors, in the days of d.c. mains in this country half the houses in a street would have been black=positive, red=negative!
The 3-wire 200/400 to 250/500V distribution came down to 2-wire services to each house, half of the homes being tapped from the positive "outer" and the other half on the negative.
The internal wiring always used black as the neutral hence houses run from the negative side of the network had their live, red wires at minus 200/250V with respect to earth.
[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 09-12-2003).]
