[Gllug] OT: Merging UPS outputs

[John Winters]

On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 12:44 +0100, Alain Williams wrote:
[snip]
> The unification of plug standards has caused much debate. It is recognised
> that the UK system is better; the cost of installing in the rest of Europe
> means that it won't happen. Don't expect a change soon.

There was a proposal to standardise European sockets back in the
eighties which reached and advanced stage before being abandoned.  The
UK system was rejected because it would have given UK manufacturers a
strong commercial advantage.  The one which was settled on instead was
very similar to the IEC power connectors in the back of your PC.  The
wall socket would have been in a kind of vertical configuration (90
degrees out from the back of normal PC power supply, with the pins
almost in a vertical line), and typically 2 sockets in the space taken
up by one UK socket.

Instead, continental European countries seem to have standardised on a
round 3 pin plug, with one pin (the earth pin) going the opposite way.
This has the advantage (or drawback, depending on how you look at it)
that you can plug a three pin plug into a two pin socket!

John

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