> > 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?

Even if you don't connect the chassis to the ground, having one side
grounded is useful.  It guarantees no large common mode voltage with
respect to a nearby water pipe or whatever.  If the secondary were
floating, nothing would prevent it from picking up a high voltage from
static electricity, lightning, leakage from the transformer primary, etc.

The "newer" (1960s ?) standard for 2 pin outlets is the neutral side a
little larger than the hot side.  Some appliances use polarized plugs to
make use of this, although I don't think you are allowed to connect the
neutral to anything a human would touch.  These appliances have one prong
larger so that they only fit one way into a polarized outlet, and don't
fit at all into an old unpolarized 2 pin outlet.  All 3 pin outlets are
polarized.

> So according to what Jim says, your mother was out in the boonies (at
> that time)?

Not at all (Salem Massachusetts actually).  Her house was built to code in
the early 1960s or late 1950s with 2 pin outlets.


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