Prompted by the French LeGrand Mosaic receptacles thread.

Thanks to new ECN member BRAINonGROUND from Germany for the following:

Wow!,
Interesting pics BoG,
And Welcome to ECN too.
One little question, in the top picture, are the sockets small, or is that plug huge?.

nEAT PICS. a QUESTION IF i MAY. aLWAYS WANTED TO ASK THIS ONE? wHY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN us AND eUROPE WIREING aLSO THE VOLTAGES. wHEN THIS WAS FIRST INVENTED WE HAD 120 OR FOR US OLD FOLKS 110. hOW DID ALL THIS COME ABOUT.

Steve, prior to the depression, even here in the US voltage and frequency differed by area. In Chicago, there are still sky-scrapers that have only DC!

Apart from just pure chance, some places deliberately chose power different from their neighbors. Our Irish member, "djk," has expressed wonder that Ireland didn't adopt shamrock-shaped plugs, 120 volts, and 72.5hz- just to make thing harder for visiting Brits!

There was also a lack of "standard plug patterns" even here in to the '70's. Indeed, RV parks still use a "non-NEMA" plug.

Yay,
Caps Lock!.

Eire is a wonderful place for Brits, [or anyone else], to visit. Or live. Several Brit ex-pats from round here have upped sticks for Southern Ireland. All the advantages of France, plus they speak English, eat proper bacon and know how to make proper tea and not a cup of lukewarm gnat's flavored with sterilised milk.

Alan

We have had a few people filter through to the South Island in NZ here (those that haven't already been mugged in the North Island), in thier hired camper vans.
A call came out from a local camping ground here for me to go down and help the US folks "get powered up" for the night.
I got there and they had a Blue IEC 309 connector and a 10m flex on it and another blue connector on the other end.
But was it because the cable was 10m long, not 30ft(imperial)long that they couldn't hook it up?.
A socket on the Camper van and one in the supply box and an RCD (GFCI) fed socket.
All 16A worth of it, is 3600W too little for you folks?.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 03-30-2006).]

Brains,
How is that diecast aluminum cover grounded? I notice also those awful 'crocodile teeth' grips in the receptacle are still being used for retention. Never could understand why that complexity was introduced when a simple screw fixing is so much better- and here we appear to have both! Any chance of some sequenced assembly pics, a la Mosaic?

Alan

@ Trumpy: Well the plug is a stadart grundet Plug of an extension cord - think it looks only that huge because of the perspective. You also can see it again on the last picture. Maybe that it appears a bit huge, but inbetween it's "law" (of the BGI) that extension cables in professional use are H07RN-F cables, shockresistant, IP44 (->protectet against spraywater and foreign body) ...the germans and their safetymania ;-)

@Alan Belson: The aluminium is not groundet, because unter the aluminium of the socket the black plastic isolates all (Safety-classII (of VDE 0701/1)). The al. is only on Top for additional stability.
On the receptacle itself you also can fix it with two screws, but it isn't common here.

The "awful" crocodile teeth are very good for the installation in ferroconcrete..., it's easy to install and you don't have to drill additional holes - the also last very long. I Think ca. 90% of all sockets, switches... here are installed that way. The additional Screwholes in the framework are for additional strenght and not that usual in livingrooms ;-)

And why here 230/400V 3-Phase (L1 L2 L3 N G) Systems are common... don't know the history of this developement?

the sequenced assembly pics will follow!

The style of that stuff is _strange_! The screw terminals scream late 80s or early 90s, and the frame around the individual socket elements just looks weird (mostly because of the huge mounting screws, all modular systems I know (and that's a lot) had the frames just held in place by the receptacle/switch covers.)

The plug isn't that big, only slightly bigger than an NZ plug. Of course it's bigger than a NEMA plug.

I know most of Southern California had 50Hz until the late '30s, and some parts until after WWII. No doubt there were many isolated mining camps with 25Hz. And of course DC mains were still common in urban centers as late as the '50s.

What other areas of the US, after 1920, would have had frequencies other than 60Hz?


Really? That's quite surprising. Which ones? How do they manage to keep any tenants, with special power requirements for everything from computers to air conditioning?

Presumably having DC wasn't a big deal back in the day-- resistive lighting, transformerless radios, gas fridges, toasters and percolators still being touted as "modern".

AS said elsewhere, DC would be only for eElevators anf maybe some ventillation. normal AC would be distributed to tenants.

The conversion of the Los Angeles area from 50 to 60Hz in the 1930s was discussed here some time ago. I can't locate the thread at the moment, but a few months ago we also had a fairly long discussion about localized variations. It was after I acquired a 1950s book on model railroading which suggested that some parts of the west coast were still on 50Hz and that parts of upstate New York used 25Hz.


As was the case in Britain. DC supplies were common in the older parts of the larger cities, i.e. those districts which were the first to have reticulated power.

There was a steel factory across the road from where I work which had a DC service in use up until they moved and the building was demolished 12 months ago. They also had a 200V 3 phase service. The DC was used for the overhead craines and some machines. Aparently the DC cable was of epic proportions and much fun was had weighing it in!

A little off-topic from power distributed to homes and businesses, but many British cities in the past also had extensive networks of 500V DC to power the trams (streetcars) and trolleybuses that once plied along their streets.

The big Schuko plug looks like a merten brand heavy duty to me. Thats about the biggest Schuko plugs, there are smaller user-wireable plugs too.

BRAINonGROUND, are these JUNG outlets?

I've noticed that the 3 wire SchuKo plugs I have can be plugged in in two ways, unlike American 3 prong power plugs. Which means that the hot and neutral on the SchuKo power cord can often get swapped. This would mean that all SchuKo power cord powered loads have to be designed to expect its neutral to be sometimes hot. Or have I missed something?

In Germany and The Netherlands the Phases and Neutrals are switched within the distribution board at the Main Switch, the section switches / MCB's and the appliances.

Here a NON M.E.N. system is in use hence the polarity is not an issue here.

The Earth wire is separated from the neutral at the switchboard and relies on a good earth bank by the consumer.

After 1977, Earth leakage group MCB's became mandatory in new installations to add extra safety.

Many European countries are much less worried about polarity than we are. Italian plugs are also reversible, and although French (grounding-type) plugs are polarized, nobody seems to worry about which way L and N are connected.

There is only one single polarity requirement in Austria, and that applies to permanently connected Edison base light sockets. Ok and yes, you're supposed to switch the phase, but that's all.

After all... if you poke around in a portable appliance then by all means unplug it!