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Museum of Plugs and Sockets
- jmague 8mo agoback to web 1.0! Nice anyway :)
- Zak 8mo agoPage loads that aren't measured in megabytes, no tracking cookies, and works without Javascript? Refreshing, if you ask me.
- tariky 8mo agoThis website is beautiful. I wish I have skill to craft something like this.
- breakingcups 8mo agoI hope it doesn't disappear: ==== Important message Due to health issues, no updates to the Plugs and Sockets website are expected in the coming months. Email contact may also be affected. For the time being, please do not send any material that might be interesting to add to the website. Next year, I shall make a decision about the future of the collection and website. Wait and see. August 2025 ====
- HPsquared 8mo agoiPod 30-pin is a classic.
- deltamidway 8mo agoMy man! I love these sorts of sites.
- jkestner 8mo agoMy favorite is https://pinouts.ru/ https://pinouts.ru/
- dabber21 8mo agoI also want ceiling sockets :( https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/LampSockets1.html https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/LampSockets1.html
- micw 8mo agoAmazing, that's a thing I want to import.
- interloxia 8mo agoThe Rozetkus-1 power strip is neat. https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/UnknownSpecimen.html https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/UnknownSpecimen.html https://www.artlebedev.com/rozetkus/1/ https://www.artlebedev.com/rozetkus/1/
- cissikatt 8mo agoWhy do you not have ceiling sockets? That's a very basic thing.
- blitzar 8mo agoI want them to make irons that plug into the light socket again.
- mrweasel 8mo agoIn every house I've owned, I've replace the ceil fixtures with those you see in pictures 24 and 25. They aren't special or hard to get, but everyone who notices seems surprised that it's a thing. I'm not sure why more people don't do it, especially in rental properties, so you avoid having tenants mess around with screw drivers and exposed wire. It installed correctly they can carry around 15kg, which is enough to most lamps. When you have a wife who constantly wants lamps moved around they are really handy. Annoyingly people surprisingly often ask me to help with their lamps, not once have I encounter them having something as sensible as a ceiling socket, that apparently only exist in my house.
- micw 8mo agoAlmost always when I'm in a country that does not have European (CEE) plugs and sockets, I feel uncomfortable. All CEE combinations have very solid touch protection. It's almost impossible to touch a metal pin of a plug when it's so close to the socket that it might have contact. When I the see the "flat" style sockets plus the full-metal pins I wonder if it's just a bad feeling or if way more people gets accidentally electrocuted with that kind of plugs/socket than with our CEE types.
- Symbiote 8mo agoI agree (Except British plugs which are also fine if made properly¹). Denmark made installing CEE (the French version) sockets legal in 2011, but the only place I've seen one is a friend's house — he's German and swapped the sockets when he bought it. ¹ Hong Kong also uses British plugs, and this seems to have led some Chinese manufacturers to make non-compliant, unsafe plugs which fit — and nowadays with Amazon, AliExpress etc selling any old rubbish they are sometimes seen in Britain.
- otherme123 8mo agoI am mainland european, but I like better the UK plugs having a fuse and being non pluggable on unearthed sockets: it is common to plug type G appliances to type C sockets. If only they had the safety depth of the CEE instead of being at surface...
- hdgvhicv 8mo agoThe socket holes are protected so you can’t jam thing in like European ones, and the metal isn’t exposed as the live and neutral are sheathed if the plug is half connected. Setting aside the fuse the socket is safer than prevented European ones (which aren’t the only European sockets going)
- otherme123 8mo agoThe socket in CEE also protect the plug from being hit laterally and damaging either the socket or the plug. In Spain, before the adoption of CEE 7/3 we had europlugs without plug pocket, and I remember half the sockets of the house wiggling on the casing due to lateral hits, and plugs coming out of the socket easily. With CEE 7/3 you have to pull, they feel really sturdy, specially compared with NEMA. I don't have much experience with UK sockets, but I bet they are not as secured (not electrically but as in this-plug-isnt-going-anywhere) as the CEE 7/3. Not a fan of the protection through a sleeve, as it encourages meddling with the socket with a screwer to use unearthed plugs. That said, I would like Shukos with fuses, and Shuko plugs unable to plug in unearthed sockets.
- ElijahLynn 8mo agoGrateful to the human who built this and finds it interesting enough to keep at it. A valuable resource indeed, available to all of humanity! Well done!
- dvh 8mo agoI was thinking about this and came to conclusion that the only correct type is UK style socket because it has fuse. In our houses, there are circuit breakers. They don't protect you or devices, they can only protect wires in the wall, those who installed the wires knew how much current they can take and installed appropriate circuit breakers. When you plug the plug in the wall socket, the circuit breaker has no idea what you plugged in so it cannot protect it, so there has to be a fuse in the plug, like in the UK plug. Whoever chose the wires for this device choose appropriate fuse. There is one more case possible, the wire is not permanently attached to the device but via another socket, for example C14 socket like in PC. In that case manufacturer of the PC should know what kind of currents it is capable of handling and should put fuse inside it. Now everything is protected (at least for over-current, if you touch live and neutral with two hands, 30mA through heart is enough to kill you but that's something that cannot be avoided, not even GFCI can do it).
- UltraSane 8mo agoUK plugs have fuses because of the use of 32 amp ring circuits.
- stephen_g 8mo agoI think it's overrated, plenty of equipment has some kind of protection internally anyway. My country has never had a fuse in the plug and we generally have a very safe electrical system (much stricter earthing rules than the US for example). Adding an extra fuse doesn't really seem to add much, it really doesn't seem to be any kind of significant risk.
- inigyou 8mo agoFuses are very imprecise devices. A 10A fuse won't really protect you from an overload of 20A. It could take an hour to blow or not blow at all. Both the 10A and 20A fuse will protect you from 1000A short circuits.
- aix1 8mo agoThis sounded surprising and so I picked the first fuse I could find on RS and looked at its datasheet [1]. The characteristic curve shows that the 10A fuse is expected to blow after about 4s at 20A. Of course there's sample-to-sample variation and different ambient conditions etc, but how do those four seconds become "an hour to blow or not blow at all"? [1] https://docs.rs-online.com/bc0e/0900766b81585c97.pdf https://docs.rs-online.com/bc0e/0900766b81585c97.pdf
- gib444 8mo agoThe Danish sockets are a happy smiley face! That's so cute https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_socket_standard.jpg https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_socket_standard.jpg This one looks a bit hungover though LOL https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_connector-2pole.jpg https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_connector-2pole.jpg
- stephen_g 8mo agoThe Australian examples are very odd - the pictures of our general purpose outlets are normal (figures 1 and 3 when you click on Australia), but most of the rest is unusual and either fairly or very rare. For example the plug shown on the main page is very non-typical - it's a re-wireable one which you very rarely see (because it's generally only if a plug has been damaged and had to be replaced) - almost all the plugs normal people will ever use in Australia will actually be fully moulded. Secondly it's right-angle, which is not incredibly rare but not the default - normally you'd only see that on some power-boards (what the US I think calls 'power strips') or some extension cables. Appliances usually have straight plugs, the right angle one you do see on them sometimes but not as much (maybe 5-10%). When you click in to the Australia page, the back side of the plug is also shown as piggy-back which is also quite rare (usually only on extension cords - such as in figure 10, that one is fairly normal). Figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 and 9 are also things you'll almost never see (it does say in the case of figure 9 that a rewirable piggy-back as shown is now disallowed by our wiring standards). Some of the example pictures would be better to be changed to something more normal, and the detailed page could probably be broken up into typical, specialist and rare/obsolete sections because it's confusing having it all together.
- defrost 8mo agoIt's an interesting point of view, conversely, as an Australian of some decades, they all look fairly normal to me and a subset of a greater spectrum I'm also familiar with. Right angle plugs may well be less common (in your experience) but they're essential for, say, getting power from the wall to a breakout strip (for TV + games consoles, NAS, media box, etc. corners) when the wall plug is behind a low cabinet / cupboard. In any case it's a museum, a catalog, intended to show a range of things that do exist, even if a good number may not encounter them frequently.
- stephen_g 8mo agoYeah I'm not saying they are unheard of - for example I've done a lot of stuff in AV and almost every single extension cord you use in that world will be a piggy-back right angle (always moulded though because they have to be test-and-tagged so a reputable certifier won't pass them). Just that not having any pictures of the plug that you see on 90% of cords in normal use is an odd choice.
- thelastgallon 8mo agoTangentially related: There are currently 15 types of domestic electrical outlet plugs in use worldwide, each of which has been assigned a letter by the US Department of Commerce International Trade Administration (ITA), starting with A and moving through the alphabet. These letters are completely arbitrary: they don't actually mandate anything -- https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/ https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/ How Japan Made Their Outlet Safe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqClY6PDCW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqClY6PDCW0
- dheera 8mo agoRadially related: Every plug looks like a face https://imgur.com/a/xPe5lT8 https://imgur.com/a/xPe5lT8
- GauntletWizard 8mo agoAs someone who lives in an RV and has done some marine electrical, I was disappointed to see zero mention of those uses. North America uses NEMA 6-50, NEMA 14-50, NEMA L6-30 and L17-30 for RV and marine uses.
- shmerl 8mo agoUK one is so massive.
- CalRobert 8mo agoHaving recently bought a Dutch house built in 1989, it’s baffling to me that almost none of the outlets are earthed. You can use a schuko plug, but it will lack an earth connection and fall out easily. Any Dutch people here able to say why that is?
- jacquesm 8mo agoBecause GFIs were not mandatory on all outlets back then and what exists is automatically grandfathered in when the rules change. Maybe in your meter box there are actually GFIs on all circuits, they just never put the grounded sockets in. Look for green marked groups or groups with test buttons. Those are the ones that are the most safe to use. But do check behind your sockets, there is a chance you may have the ground wires already pulled in and they just saved on the sockets. I have the opposite problem here: I have all of my outlets on GFIs and there are ground wires everywhere. But the system is sensitive enough that I can't use my 10KA spotwelder because the phase lag is such that the system thinks there is a leak when there really isn't.
- CalRobert 8mo agoThanks! I do have a GFCI (aka RCD) at the panel but the lack of grounding is unsettling. If nothing else the Schuko outlet is a lot better at preventing plugs from falling out. I'll pull an outlet out and have a look for an Earth wire.
- jacquesm 8mo agoYellow/Green. Sometimes they push them back a bit so it can be hard to spot. Another way to see it is to pull the front off the distribution panel, if you see Yellow/Green from a common rail going into every one of the outgoing tubes then you know it is at least wired up properly. If you only see blue and brown wires going into the tubes except for the ones to kitchen and bathroom then they won't be there. It is possible to pull in a ground wire afterwards but it is quite a bit of work, I've done it, the annoying bit is if there is a pull box that isn't exposed and they made a junction in there, then you have to break stuff to be able to reach the box. Technically that's illegal but I doubt there is a house in NL that doesn't have at least one or two of those.
- skrebbel 8mo agoThe Danish socket is the happiest socket and I get a pang of joy every time I visit Denmark.
- Towaway69 8mo agoOk understand - https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/Danish1.html https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/Danish1.html :-) I guess if you were to take a fork to an outlet, in Denmark you would definitely think twice.
- robin_reala 8mo ago…until you have to stab its little eyes with the pins of the plug.
- hdgvhicv 8mo agoOh but all sites need colour banners they say This site avoids monetisation, it’s just made because the author thinks it’s cool. Therefore it’s fast, cheap, and has none of the nonsense the modern web comes with.
- LeonidasXIV 8mo agoA bit of a shame that it mentions the wretched type K plugs in Denmark but leaves out the "EDB" type DK 2-5a plugs/sockets, which add a new dimension of problems to the mix!
- kirmerzlikin 8mo agoThey're mentioned on a dedicated page about uncommon Danish plugs and sockets [1]. [1] https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Danish2.html https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Danish2.html
- stevekemp 8mo agoOne thing nobody seems to have mentioned here is how unusual it seems to be to have a switch on sockets. I grew up with the famous British Plug, and while people make lots of comments about the safety-centric design and the fuse in the plug few people care about the switch. I like to be able to turn off power to the TV when I'm not using it for a few weeks, etc, and that's something I genuinely missed when I moved to Finland with the EU-sockets.
- UltraSane 8mo agoIn the US it is pretty common to have some outlets wired to a wall switch.
- mdtrooper 8mo agoThere is not a old socket from the toilets in the old trains (maybe trains are 60 years old...more or less 1970) in Spain. This sockets are near the mirror and I think that this sockets were for old electic shavers.
- lejalv 8mo agoI've mostly experienced UK and Schuko/CEE plugs, and I immediately felt the Swiss plug offered the best form factor (with grounding). Now I see the Italian one looks even more compact, and reversible. Can somebody comment on these two plugs? Is there any reason to prefer the bulky Schuko to the leaner Swiss/Italian plug style? EDIT: meant plug, not socket
- bald 8mo agoSchuko can do 16A permanent load, the Swiss can do 10A afaik
- jve 8mo agoI see Italy plug is not "within depth"... Don't think I'd like it. Swiss seems to care how you orient the plug. Anyways, haven't used them - maybe Italy has also a socket that provides more support apart from inserted pins.