Almost 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.
Despite being fairly careless when handling them, I've managed a fair few decades without once shocking myself.
With that being said, I would be delighted with CEE, BS or almost anything other than NEMA anything.
The 120v plugs aren't the worst thing since they usually have some good gripping points, and the 50 amp plugs usually have a handle on the back, but the 30 amp plugs typically have no finger indentation at all for gripping and I feel like my fingers are going to slip over and around every time I pull one out.
I 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.
US style plugs and derivatives (and Australian, Japanese, Brazilian, etc) - all invented by Hubbell - are "good enough".
Are they objectively good? No. Do they regularly fail, cause fires, or shock people? No.
Even my kids when young understood how to grip the plug without touching the metal contacts and to this day still have not been shocked. In theory can something fall and hit the pins just right to cause a short? Sure. You could also get struck by lightning. In practice it just doesn't happen very often.
For the US/North American NEMA style there are some improvements and some clever things about them. Modern receptacles have shutter doors that stop you from putting anything into the holes unless the ground pin or neutral pin unlocks it first. Many plugs also cover the rear part of the hot/neutral with plastic so if the plug is not fully inserted there is no exposed metal.
The plugs also prevent mixing voltage and amperage. The typical two vertical blades (5-15) are for 15 amp circuits. 20 amp circuits (5-20) have one horizontal + one vertical blade. The receptacle has a T shaped slot to match - that way you can plug a low-amp device into a high-amp circuit but not the reverse.
Similarly the 240v version of this plug (6-15/6-20) has the same property: 15amp and 20amp versions. The 15 amp is two horizontal blades. The 20 amp is one horizontal + 1 vertical but swapped places compared to the 120v version. I do wish more builders installed the 240v receptacles in kitchens in the US. There is no technical reason we can't have higher power kettles and whatnot. If code required these in garages and kitchens more appliances would be available for them.
(I find it insane that Brazil continues to be dual exclusive voltage; all of North America is dual concurrent voltage. Every home/office has 120v and 240v available. In Brazil it depends on what state/city you live in - some get 120v, some get 240v. Even worse they use the same standard plug design for both so you'd better hope the plug is the right color or has the right sticker. And you can't be sure you can take electrical appliances from one city to the next! At least they should have adopted different plugs for different voltages.)
The huge advantage of these plugs is compatibility. We already have them. The cost to change designs is massive. The benefit extremely small. It just isn't worth doing.
Note: The 240v NEMA plugs I am referencing are not "dryer plugs" which are physically much* larger and designed for much higher amp loads in the 30-60 range. The 6-15/6-20 are literally identical to the standard 120v plugs but with different blade orientations. They were designed to support 240v appliances in everyday use since all of North America is dual voltage. In practice 240v is only ever used for large appliances like ovens so the 6 series doesn't get much use which is a bit of a shame.
I 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).
I disagree. The plug is usually part of an appliance connector cable, that has no idea what happens to be on the other side aswell. If you size that cable for the same current as the socket, the cable itself is protected by the circuit breaker.
The correct spot for the fuse is the appliance itself. Fuses used to be easily replaceable, often with fuse holders [1]. I have, however, never seen a computer with one.
I 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.
The historical reason why is that UK homes were wired early in history for lighting with a ring circuit going throughout the house, and this was also literally set in stone so impractical to phase out for a long time.
So the regulations had to allow one 50A (for example, I don’t know the actual numbers) fuse supplying an unknown number of outlets and devices, rather than requiring one circuit per small area. Such a large fuse will happily let your radio malfunction and start on fire, so local, smaller fuses are necessary.
In other areas a 10A fuse (for example) on a circuit that only goes to one room or one appliance is enough to protect from overloading the circuit as well as most dangerous malfunctions of one device.
Per-socket circuit breakers are very much a thing here in the US. I assume they are mandatory in wet environments like bathrooms and kitchens. I think they are adequate to protect against a local leak from the live wire to the ground wire, which would likely mean that the connected device is broken or got water inside it, and may be dangerous to touch.
I suppose that a device that suddenly starts to consume far more current than normal under normal voltage is likely broken / fried inside, and it's too late to save it by blowing a fuse. The fuse just prevents a fire, but an automatic circuit breaker in a socket would likely do the same.
There is the case of overvoltage due e.g. to nearby lightning strikes. I suppose a fuse is unlikely to save your computer in such a case, it's too slow. Fast-acting power line protectors exist though, and are cheap and ubiquitous.
If you really want to protect a piece of equipment, you need overload or protection relays. These come in various types for various applications, motor overloads, phase loss relays, and ground fault protection relays are a few types.
A three-phase motor circuit (VFD or starter controlled) has either thermal or solid-state overloads after the contactor to protect the motor and wiring in the event of a motor short, any upstream fuses or circuit breakers are just for overcurrent protection.
Fuses 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.
The 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.
It'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.
They used to be more common in the pre power board age (piggy backs, and screw terminal - they were very common back in the day), I can't see a date anywhere on the page. 5-8 are more specialist.
Grateful 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!
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/
One 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.
In 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.
I'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?
There 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.
Having 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.
Because 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.
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
As 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.
A 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!
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.
micw|4 days ago
zdragnar|4 days ago
With that being said, I would be delighted with CEE, BS or almost anything other than NEMA anything.
The 120v plugs aren't the worst thing since they usually have some good gripping points, and the 50 amp plugs usually have a handle on the back, but the 30 amp plugs typically have no finger indentation at all for gripping and I feel like my fingers are going to slip over and around every time I pull one out.
UltraSane|4 days ago
Symbiote|4 days ago
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.
xenadu02|4 days ago
Are they objectively good? No. Do they regularly fail, cause fires, or shock people? No.
Even my kids when young understood how to grip the plug without touching the metal contacts and to this day still have not been shocked. In theory can something fall and hit the pins just right to cause a short? Sure. You could also get struck by lightning. In practice it just doesn't happen very often.
For the US/North American NEMA style there are some improvements and some clever things about them. Modern receptacles have shutter doors that stop you from putting anything into the holes unless the ground pin or neutral pin unlocks it first. Many plugs also cover the rear part of the hot/neutral with plastic so if the plug is not fully inserted there is no exposed metal.
The plugs also prevent mixing voltage and amperage. The typical two vertical blades (5-15) are for 15 amp circuits. 20 amp circuits (5-20) have one horizontal + one vertical blade. The receptacle has a T shaped slot to match - that way you can plug a low-amp device into a high-amp circuit but not the reverse.
Similarly the 240v version of this plug (6-15/6-20) has the same property: 15amp and 20amp versions. The 15 amp is two horizontal blades. The 20 amp is one horizontal + 1 vertical but swapped places compared to the 120v version. I do wish more builders installed the 240v receptacles in kitchens in the US. There is no technical reason we can't have higher power kettles and whatnot. If code required these in garages and kitchens more appliances would be available for them.
(I find it insane that Brazil continues to be dual exclusive voltage; all of North America is dual concurrent voltage. Every home/office has 120v and 240v available. In Brazil it depends on what state/city you live in - some get 120v, some get 240v. Even worse they use the same standard plug design for both so you'd better hope the plug is the right color or has the right sticker. And you can't be sure you can take electrical appliances from one city to the next! At least they should have adopted different plugs for different voltages.)
The huge advantage of these plugs is compatibility. We already have them. The cost to change designs is massive. The benefit extremely small. It just isn't worth doing.
Note: The 240v NEMA plugs I am referencing are not "dryer plugs" which are physically much* larger and designed for much higher amp loads in the 30-60 range. The 6-15/6-20 are literally identical to the standard 120v plugs but with different blade orientations. They were designed to support 240v appliances in everyday use since all of North America is dual voltage. In practice 240v is only ever used for large appliances like ovens so the 6 series doesn't get much use which is a bit of a shame.
dvh|4 days ago
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).
UebVar|4 days ago
The correct spot for the fuse is the appliance itself. Fuses used to be easily replaceable, often with fuse holders [1]. I have, however, never seen a computer with one.
[1] https://uk.farnell.com/productimages/large/en_US/4578676.jpg
stephen_g|4 days ago
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.
johnwalkr|4 days ago
So the regulations had to allow one 50A (for example, I don’t know the actual numbers) fuse supplying an unknown number of outlets and devices, rather than requiring one circuit per small area. Such a large fuse will happily let your radio malfunction and start on fire, so local, smaller fuses are necessary.
In other areas a 10A fuse (for example) on a circuit that only goes to one room or one appliance is enough to protect from overloading the circuit as well as most dangerous malfunctions of one device.
nine_k|4 days ago
I suppose that a device that suddenly starts to consume far more current than normal under normal voltage is likely broken / fried inside, and it's too late to save it by blowing a fuse. The fuse just prevents a fire, but an automatic circuit breaker in a socket would likely do the same.
There is the case of overvoltage due e.g. to nearby lightning strikes. I suppose a fuse is unlikely to save your computer in such a case, it's too slow. Fast-acting power line protectors exist though, and are cheap and ubiquitous.
quickthrowman|3 days ago
A three-phase motor circuit (VFD or starter controlled) has either thermal or solid-state overloads after the contactor to protect the motor and wiring in the event of a motor short, any upstream fuses or circuit breakers are just for overcurrent protection.
inigyou|4 days ago
UltraSane|4 days ago
dajonker|3 days ago
stephen_g|4 days ago
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|4 days ago
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.
nine_k|4 days ago
(I, for instance, like the uncommon Italian design of plugs without pins.)
chadcmulligan|4 days ago
ElijahLynn|4 days ago
thelastgallon|4 days ago
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/
How Japan Made Their Outlet Safe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqClY6PDCW0
dheera|4 days ago
Every plug looks like a face
https://imgur.com/a/xPe5lT8
skrebbel|4 days ago
Towaway69|4 days ago
I guess if you were to take a fork to an outlet, in Denmark you would definitely think twice.
robin_reala|4 days ago
stevekemp|4 days ago
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|4 days ago
dabber21|4 days ago
mrweasel|4 days ago
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.
interloxia|4 days ago
https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/UnknownSpecimen.html https://www.artlebedev.com/rozetkus/1/
cissikatt|4 days ago
blitzar|4 days ago
micw|4 days ago
gib444|4 days ago
https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_socket_standard.jpg
This one looks a bit hungover though LOL
https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_connector-2pole.jpg
lejalv|4 days ago
Is there any reason to prefer the bulky Schuko to the leaner Swiss/Italian plug style?
EDIT: meant plug, not socket
jve|4 days ago
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.
bald|4 days ago
mdtrooper|4 days ago
CalRobert|4 days ago
Any Dutch people here able to say why that is?
jacquesm|4 days ago
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.
tariky|4 days ago
breakingcups|4 days ago
====
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
====
shmerl|4 days ago
pja|4 days ago
GauntletWizard|4 days ago
LeonidasXIV|4 days ago
kirmerzlikin|4 days ago
[1] https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Danish2.html
deltamidway|4 days ago
jkestner|4 days ago
HPsquared|4 days ago
jmague|4 days ago
Zak|4 days ago
hdgvhicv|4 days ago
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.