>But they may as well have been ungrounded right?

No.

THEY simply did not have the third 'safety' grounding prong ...

This is a far cry from an UNGROUNDED system which would NOT
meet eletrical code (you didn't read any of the fine historical
and technical material I dutifully scanned and posted?) *and*
represent a SIGNIFICANT DANGER to human users ...


RF Jim


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean Alcorn - Avion Sydney" <sdalcorn@AVION.COM.AU>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 9:09 PM
Subject: Re: [PIC]: Direct LED connection?


> Olin,
>
> > 2-pin yes, but not ungrounded.
>
> But they may as well have been ungrounded right? The ground could not
> have been connected to the chassis of the appliance? AFIK, the pins
> were not polarised - although I have seen some plugs with one pin
> slightly larger than the other - so the plug could very easily be
> reversed and the 'hot' applied to the chassis?
>
> >   These were the norm until the 1960s(?) when
> > all new house outlets had to be 3-pin.  There are still many in houses
> > that
> > were built before this requirement.  My mother's house was built in
> > the late
> > 1950s or early 1960s and all original outlets were 2-pin but new ones
> > added
> > since then are 3-pin.
>
> So according to what Jim says, your mother was out in the boonies (at
> that time)?
>
> > My office is in a building originally built in 1880
>
> Very nice (I assume - if it's been maintained well)
>
> > (before electrons were
> > invented) and there are some very strange looking power outlets that
> > I've
> > never seen anywhere else in a few places.  Fortunately none of these
> > seem to
> > be live.
>
> So you have a kerosene powered PC? :-)
>
> Sean
>

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body