<story><title>Museum of Plugs and Sockets</title><url>https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asplake</author><text>As a Brit, got to say that I wish we used Europlugs here. Ours are so bulky (a pain for anything portable), and the US ones seem so flimsy.&lt;p&gt;Also, there ought to be a museum of hotel electrics. Weird light switch behaviour, dumb (pre phone charger) socket placement, heating&amp;#x2F;cooling controls, etc</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smcl</author><text>As a Brit living in the EU, I kinda miss the ones back home - for two reasons, the grip and the orientation. I don&amp;#x27;t know anything about relative safety of either, this is purely about UX :)&lt;p&gt;The UK plugs usually have a very clear way to grip them and pull them out of the socket, and yanking them by the cable neither looks &lt;i&gt;nor&lt;/i&gt; feels right. Whereas the Europlug ones I have mostly have a very dainty, slight place to grip with your fingers and are often &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; tight - often they really invite you to pull by the cable itself.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a little bit of ambiguity about orientation - sometimes the socket has an extra prong sticking out meaning you have to use the plug the right way up, and sometimes there&amp;#x27;s none. But it can sometimes happen that you&amp;#x27;re not sure if you&amp;#x27;re a few degrees out in aligning the prongs in the plug, or if you&amp;#x27;re just the wrong way up and the earth prong is in the way. Obviously if you can see the socket this isn&amp;#x27;t a huge issue, but if you&amp;#x27;re reaching behind a TV unit, or a desk or a counter etc you&amp;#x27;re in for a bit of fumbling.&lt;p&gt;I have a similar feeling around lightswitches - the European ones are large, delicate and a little flimsy and the UK ones are little and compact and feel solid. I think it&amp;#x27;s not allowed to have the UK switches here, which is a shame otherwise I&amp;#x27;d fit out my flat with them :)&lt;p&gt;update: oh speaking of switches I completely forgot that power sockets generally &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; have an on&amp;#x2F;off switch in the UK. I guess it comes down to personal preference but I liked having the extra &amp;quot;off&amp;quot; switch for reasons that I can&amp;#x27;t quite articulate</text></comment>
<story><title>Museum of Plugs and Sockets</title><url>https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asplake</author><text>As a Brit, got to say that I wish we used Europlugs here. Ours are so bulky (a pain for anything portable), and the US ones seem so flimsy.&lt;p&gt;Also, there ought to be a museum of hotel electrics. Weird light switch behaviour, dumb (pre phone charger) socket placement, heating&amp;#x2F;cooling controls, etc</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mytailorisrich</author><text>As an European who&amp;#x27;s travelled and now lives in the UK I find that the British plugs and sockets are the best ones.&lt;p&gt;The metal connectors are big, but that feels like quality, but the plugs are not bulky off the wall because of the overall angled design (European plugs actually eat up more space off the wall because they are straight although of course europlugs take much less surface area on the wall), which is good behind furnitures or where space is tight. There is only one sort of plug and it has a well designed earth connector. Plugs include a fuse and it&amp;#x27;s easily replaceable (this is partly due to the standard use of ring circuits in the UK but I find it a nice feature anyway). They have very good grip and stay in place very well (compare this to europlug...). Sockets have an integrated switch.&lt;p&gt;British plugs are a quiet success (the other one being postcodes).</text></comment>