This page has a lot of interesting info about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency tl;dr: Nowaday

This page has a lot of interesting info about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency tl;dr: Nowadays there are no real advantages/disadvantages to prefer 50Hz vs 60Hz. The distinction is mostly just because of historical vendor lock-in.