THE VIDEO SHELF · british plug design
British Plugs Are Better Than All Other Plugs, And Here's Why
Tom Scott explains the design of the British BS 1363 plug and socket, including fuses, shutters and safety features, and why he thinks it beats other plugs.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN treats it as the obligatory video to share whenever plugs and sockets come up, praised for its safety reasoning.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Tom Scott
- Topic
- british plug design
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 13
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2019–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
For anyone that does not know why, as rarely as I recommend videos I very much suggest Tom Scott's video "British Plugs Are Better Than All Other Plugs, And Here's Why": [VIDEO]
lewiscollard on Hacker News · 2019-08
In North American versus European distribution systems (2011)Why Britain has the best wall sockets on earth: [VIDEO] Sure there is bias there, but the reasoning is pretty compelling. Of course getting any country to switch is nigh-on impossible.
stevekemp on Hacker News · 2019-07
In Why Three Prongs? (1996)> The only real advantage of the British plug over Schuko is the fuse (a debatable feature) Could I ask why a fuse is debatable? Seems like quite a basic security feature. There's a good video[0] on the design of UK plugs if you're interested. …
tentacleuno on Hacker News · 2021-11
In Museum of Plugs and Sockets
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.