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Re: Just Wondering
For anyone out there that thinks standing on Lego (note, the plural and singular form are the same, no 's' required) is painful, try standing on a UK 240V plug that is lying on it's flat back, prongs up.
NZ plugs are sort of halfway between the UK and US. Three pins are usual, but they are insubstantial compared to the UK ones, and just to be different, the live and neutral blades are angled. Still, they can still hurt, but rarely lie flat on their backs, partly because the body is small so that is not a stable orientation, but mainly because most moulded-on OEM cables have the cable coming out of the back of the plug, and only DIY replaceable plugs have an entry on the bottom edge, as is normal with a UK plug. If UK plugs were like this, many a bruised foot could be prevented.
As to why this orientation of plug and cable is becoming prevalent, my guess is that it's a combination. This style is particularly suited to mass production moulding techniques to form the plug body, and the expectation is that a multi-socket extension cable will be employed more often than not, and this style allows all the sockets to be used without the cable from one blocking access to another, regardless of the orientation of the sockets.
But that just introduces the topic of power adapters and the lazy, space hungry design of many of those does block adjacent sockets.
For anyone out there that thinks standing on Lego (note, the plural and singular form are the same, no 's' required) is painful, try standing on a UK 240V plug that is lying on it's flat back, prongs up.
NZ plugs are sort of halfway between the UK and US. Three pins are usual, but they are insubstantial compared to the UK ones, and just to be different, the live and neutral blades are angled. Still, they can still hurt, but rarely lie flat on their backs, partly because the body is small so that is not a stable orientation, but mainly because most moulded-on OEM cables have the cable coming out of the back of the plug, and only DIY replaceable plugs have an entry on the bottom edge, as is normal with a UK plug. If UK plugs were like this, many a bruised foot could be prevented.
As to why this orientation of plug and cable is becoming prevalent, my guess is that it's a combination. This style is particularly suited to mass production moulding techniques to form the plug body, and the expectation is that a multi-socket extension cable will be employed more often than not, and this style allows all the sockets to be used without the cable from one blocking access to another, regardless of the orientation of the sockets.
But that just introduces the topic of power adapters and the lazy, space hungry design of many of those does block adjacent sockets.
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