311 lines
15 KiB
Markdown
311 lines
15 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2015-10-12T12:07:21.000Z'
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title: Why Every Country Has a Different Plug (2009)
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url: http://gizmodo.com/5391271/giz-explains-why-every-country-has-a-different-fing-plug
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author: JacobAldridge
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points: 48
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 57
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1444651641
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_JacobAldridge
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- story_10373969
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objectID: '10373969'
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year: 2009
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---
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Ok, maybe not every country, but with at least 12 different sockets in
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widespread use it sure as hell feels like it to anyone who's ever
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traveled. So why in the world, literally, are there so many? Funny
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story\!
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The more you look at the writhing orgy of plugs in the world, the
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sillier it seems. If you buy a phone charger at the airport in Florida,
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you won't be able to use it when your flight lands in France. If you buy
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a three-pronged adapter for le portable in Paris, you might not be able
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to plug it in when your train drops you off in Germany. And when your
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flight finally bounces to a stop on the runway in London, get ready to
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buy a comically large adapter to tap into the grid there. But that's
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cool\! You can take the same adapter to Singapore with you\! And parts
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of Nigeria\! Oh yeah, and if said charger doesn't support 240v power
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natively, make sure you buy a converter, or else it might explode.
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Advertisement
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And aside from a few oases, like the fledgling standardization of the
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Type C Europlug in the European Union, this is the picture all across
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the world.
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I'd hesitate to refer to power sockets as a part of a country's culture,
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because they're plugs—they don't really mean anything. But in the sense
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that they're probably not going to change until they're forcefully
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replaced with something wildly new, it's kind of what they
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are.
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## What's Out There
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Advertisement
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Click for larger
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There are around 12 major plug types in use today, each of which goes by
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whatever name their adoptive countries choose. For our purposes, we're
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going to stick with [U.S. Department of Commerce International Trade
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Administration
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names](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CA4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ita.doc.gov%2Fmedia%2Fpublications%2Fpdf%2Fcurrent2002final.pdf&ei=MnboSqTTHtTdlAf9wpj9Bw&usg=AFQjCNHsDqIMskNIE2F4O-rd6A2_rd8Z8Q&sig2=8E4MDqwwsI1Q9AC6ypW99g)
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(PDF), which are neat and alphabetical: America uses A and B plugs\!
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Turkey uses type C\! Etc. Thing is, these names are arbitrary: the
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letters are just assigned to make talking about these plugs less
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confusing—they don't actually mandate anything. They're not standards,
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in any meaningful sense of the word.
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And even worse, these sockets are divided into two main groups: the
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110-120v fellas, like the the ones we use in North America, and the
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220-240v plugs, like most of the rest of the world uses. It's not that
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the plugs and sockets themselves are somehow tied to one voltage or
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another, but the devices and power grids they're attached to probably
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are.
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Advertisement
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## How This Happened
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The history of the voltage split is a pretty short story, and one you've
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probably heard bits and pieces of before. Edison's early experiments
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with direct current (DC) power in the late 1800s netted the first useful
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mainstream applications for electricity, but suffered from a tendency to
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lose voltage over long distances. Nonetheless, when Nikola Tesla
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invented a means of long-distance transmission with alternating current
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(AC) power, he was doing so in direct competition with Edison's
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technology, which happened to be 110v. He stuck with that. By the time
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people started to realize that 240v power might not be such a bad idea
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for the US, it was the 1950s, and switching was out of the question.
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Words were
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[exchanged](http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/old%20physics%2010/physics%2010%20notes/Electrocution.html),
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elephants were
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[electrocuted](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bowA1xUZpmA), and
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eventually, the debate was settled: AC power was the only option, and
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national standardization [started in
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earnest](http://illumin.usc.edu/article.php?articleID=181&page=4).
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Westinghouse Electric, the first company to buy Tesla's patents for
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power transmission, settled on an easy standard: 60Hz, and 110v. In
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Europe—Germany, specifically—a company called BEW exercised their
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monopoly to push things a little further. They settled somewhat
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arbitrarily on a 50Hz frequency, but more importantly jacked voltages up
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to 240, because, you know, MORE POWER. And so, the 240 standard slowly
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spread to the rest of the continent. All this happened before the turn
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of the century, by the way. It's an old
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beef.
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Advertisement
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For decades after the first standards, newfangled el-ec-trick-al
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dee-vices had to be patched directly into your house's wiring, which
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today sounds like a terrifying prospect. Then, too, it was: Harvey
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Hubbell's "[Separable Attachment
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Plug](http://www.google.com/patents?id=mQBKAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false)"—which
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essentially allowed for non-bulb devices to be plugged into a light
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socket for power—was designed with a simple intention:
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> My invention has for its object to...do away with the possibility of
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> arcing or sparking in making connection, so that electrical power in
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> buildings may be utilized by persons having no electrical knowledge or
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> skill.
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Advertisement
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Thanks, Harvey\! He later adapted the original design to include a
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two-pronged flat-blade plug, which itself was refined into a
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three-pronged plug—the third prong is for grounding—by a guy named
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Philip Labre in 1928. This design saw a few changes over the years too,
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but it's pretty much the type Americans use now.
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Here's the thing: Stories like that of Harvey Hubbell's plug were
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unfolding all over the world, each with their own twist on the concept.
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This was before electronics were globalized, and before
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country-to-country plug compatibility really mattered. The voltage
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debate had been pared down to two(ish) which made life a bit easier for
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power companies to set up shop across the world. \[Note: There are
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technically more than two voltages in use, which reader Michael
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clarifies rather wonderfully
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[here](http://gizmodo.com/5391271/giz-explains-why-every-country-has-a-different-fing-plug#c16371711)\].
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But once they were set up, who cared what style plug their customers
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used? What were you gonna do, lug your new vacuum cleaner across the
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ocean on a boat? Early efforts to standardize the plug by organizations
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like the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) had trouble
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taking hold—who were they to tell a country which plug to adopt?—and
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what little progress they did make was shattered by the Second World
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War.
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Advertisement
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Take [the British
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plug](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theiet.org%2Fpublishing%2Fwiring-regulations%2Fmag%2F2006%2F18-plugorigin.cfm%3Ftype%3Dpdf&ei=H27oStjRLc7blAfU4JyGCA&usg=AFQjCNGzEqKJY-io2tvy0dSMjH0JNT_Zqg&sig2=c2vwWsPc74IcCcFTApD3mQ).
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Today, it's a huge, three-pronged beast with a fuse built right into
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it—one of the weirder plugs in the world, to anyone who's had a chance
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to use one. But it isn't Britain's first plug, or even their first
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proprietary plug. In the early 1900s the Isles' cords were capped with
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the British Standard 546, or Type D hardware, which actually include six
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subversions of its own, all of which were physically incompatible with
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one another. This worked out fine until the Second World War, when they
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got the shit bombed out of them by Germany, and had to rebuild entire
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swaths of the country in the midst of a severe shortage of basic
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building supplies— copper, in particular. This made rewiring stuff an
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expensive proposition, so the government was all, "we need a new plug,
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stat\!"
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Here was the pitch: Instead of wiring each socket to a fuseboard
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somewhere in the house, which would take quite a bit of wire, why not
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just daisy-chain them together on one wire, and put the fuses in each
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plug? Hey presto, copper shortage, solved. This was called the British
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Standard 1363, and you can still find them dangling from wires today.
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Notice how even in the 1940s and '50s—practically yesterday\!—the UK was
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devising a new type of plug without any regard for the rest of the
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world.
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Advertisement
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Now imagine every other developed country in the world doing the same
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thing, with a totally different set of historical circumstances. That's
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how we ended up here, blowing fuses in our Paris hotel rooms because our
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travel adapters' voltage warning were inexplicably written in Cyrillic.
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Oh, and it gets
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worse.
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You know how the British had control over India for, like, ninety years?
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Well, along with exporting cricket and inflicting unquantifiable
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cultural damage, they showed the subcontinent how to plug stuff in, the
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British way\! Problem is, they left in 1947. The BS 1363 plug—the new
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one—wasn't introduced until 1946, and didn't see widespread adoption
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until a few years later. So India still uses the old British plug, as
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does Sri Lanka, Nepal and Namibia. Basically, the best way to guess
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who's got which socket is to brush up on your WW1/WW2 history, and to
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have a deep passion for postcolonial literature. No, really.
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Advertisement
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## Is There Any Hope for the Future?
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No. I talked to Gabriela Ehrlich, head of communications for the
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International Electrotechnical Commission, which is still doing its
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thing over in Switzerland, and the outlook isn't great. "There are
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standards, and there is a plug that has been designed. The problem is,
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really, everyone's invested in their own system. It's difficult to get
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away from that."
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When Holland's International Questions Commission first teamed up with
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the IEC to form a committee to talk about this exact problem in 1934.
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Meetings were stalled, there was some resistance, blah blah blah, and
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the committee was delayed until 1940. Then a war—a World War,
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even\!—threw a stick in the committee's spokes, (or a fork in their
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socket? No?), and the issue was effectively dropped until about 1950,
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when the IEC realized that there were "limited prospects for any
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agreement even in this limited geographical region (Europe)." It'd be
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expensive to tear out everyone's sockets, and the need didn't feel that
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urgent, I guess.
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Advertisement
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Plus, the IEC can't force anyone to do anything—they're sort of like the
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UN General Assembly for electronics standards, which means they can
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issue them, but nobody has to follow them, no matter how good they are.
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As time passed, populations grew, and hundred of millions of sockets
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were installed all over the world. The prospect of switching hardware
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looked more and more ridiculous. Who would pay for it? Why would a
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country want to change? Wouldn't the interim, with mixed plug standards
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in the same country, be
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dangerous?
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But the IEC didn't quite abandon hope, quietly pushing for a standard
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plug for decades after. And they even came up with some\! In the late
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80s, they came up with the IEC 60906 plug, a little, round-pronged
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number for 240v countries. Then they codified a flat-pronged plug for
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110-120v countries, which happened to be perfectly compatible with the
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one we already use in the US. As of today, Brazil is the only country
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that plans to has adopt\[ed\] the IEC 60906, so, uh, there's
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that.
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Advertisement
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I asked Gabriela if there was any hope, any hope at all, for a future
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where plugs could just get along:
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> Maybe in the future you'll have induction charging; you have a device
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> planted into your wall, and you have a \[wireless\] charging
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> mechanism.
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Advertisement
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Last time I saw a wireless power prototype was at the Intel Developer
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Forum in 2008, and it [looked like a science fair
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project](http://gizmodo.com/5039871/intel-says-theyve-taken-a-huge-leap-in-wireless-power-tech):
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It consisted of two giant coils, just inches apart, which transmitted
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enough electricity to light a 40w light bulb. So yeah, we'll get this
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power plug problem all sorted by oh, let's say, 2050?
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She took care to emphasize that the standards are still there for people
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to adopt, so countries could jump onboard, but even in a best-case
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scenario, for as long as we use wires we'll have at least two standards
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to deal with—a 110-120v flat plug and the 240-250v round plug. For now,
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the Commission is taking a more practical approach to dealing with the
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problem, issuing specs for things like laptop power bricks, which can
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handle both voltages and come with interchangeable lead wires, as well
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as as something near and dear to our hearts: "We have to move forward
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into plugs we can really control," Gabriela told me. She means new stuff
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like USB, which is turning into the de facto gadget charging standard.
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The most we can hope for is a future where AC outlets are invisible to
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us, sending power to newer, more universal plugs. My phone'll charge via
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USB just as well in Sub-Saharan Africa as it will in New York City; just
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give me the port.
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Advertisement
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In the meantime, this means that things really aren't going to change.
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Your Walmart shaver will still die if you plug it into a European socket
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with a bare adapter, Indians will still be reminded of the British
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Empire every time they unplug a laptop, Israel will have their own plug
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which works nowhere else in the world, and El Salvador, without a
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national standard, will continue to wrestle with 10 different kinds of
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plug.
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In other words, sorry.
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Many thanks to Gabriela Ehrlich and [the IEC](http://www.iec.ch/), as
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well as the [Institute for Engineering and
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Technology](http://www.theiet.org/) and Wiring Matters
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([PDF](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theiet.org%2Fpublishing%2Fwiring-regulations%2Fmag%2F2006%2F18-plugorigin.cfm%3Ftype%3Dpdf&ei=H27oStjRLc7blAfU4JyGCA&usg=AFQjCNGzEqKJY-io2tvy0dSMjH0JNT_Zqg&sig2=c2vwWsPc74IcCcFTApD3mQ)),
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and USC Viterbi's illumin
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[review](http://illumin.usc.edu/article.php?articleID=181&page=4). Map
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adapted from [Wikimedia
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Commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WorldMap_PlugTypeInUse.png)
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by Intern Kyle
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Advertisement
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Still something you wanna know? Still can't figure out how to plug in
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your Bosnian knockoff iPhone? Send questions, tips, addenda or
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complaints to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.
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