Lindy,

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 14:10:22 +0200, Lindy Mayfield wrote:

> Thanks all for the sanity check.  By the way, my three prong wall wart that I received had a third prong made of hard plastic.  
> 
> Go figure. 

What Alan said about the shuttered sockets, plus it polarises the plug so that the live/neutral aren't reversed.  This is important 
because with the plugtop fuse in the live line, an overcurrent fault which blows the fuse would leave the live connected (which could have 
fatal consequences) if the wires were connected wrong-way-round.

The way our power system is set up is very much an integrated design, and some things have to be the way they are to make sure they don't 
compromise something else (eg. you can have thin flex supplying things like radios, table lamps, and so on, because the small-value fuse 
in the plug protects it without it having to take the full fault-current needed to trip the breaker, often 32A).

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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