Other items (unfinished pages)

This page documents items whose descriptions and/or pictures haven't yet been finalised. While these will all be eventually moved to other pages, this may take some time, so this specific page is to show these items before they're fully ready to be moved to their respective sections.

Note: images on this page are still missing.

North American fuse panel

This is a classic example of a North American fuse panel, which accepts fuses with an Edison screw base. This specific model has spaces for 8 fuses as well as two pull-out cartridges, respectively for the incoming supply (fused at 60A, the maximum for this panel) and a stove circuit. Each pull-out cartridge houses two tubular-shaped fuses, one for each leg of a typical American split-phase supply.

While originally this panel would have accepted "classic" Edison base fuses, also known as type T, all of the ones currently installed are of the smaller type S variety, a later variant introduced to prevent someone from swapping a fuse from one of a higher current, which was possible with the original system. Adaptors were made to convert regular panels to type S ones, which were made purposefully hard to remove. These are nowadays required for existing installations.

The "guts" of the panel are housed in a roomy metal enclosure, as is common on American electrical equipment. Aside from the supply and load terminals, there's also a small terminal block for the neutral connection on the top, which is then linked down to a larger one for each individual circuit. The terminal strip also has a spot for connecting it to the chassis (and thus earth) of the panel using a so-called "bonding screw" - this is because of the North American implementation of the TN-C-S earthing system, where the connection of the installation's earthing to the neutral is done at the distribution board rather than in the electricity supplier's equipment. A separate busbar for the earth connections isn't present, though it's likely that most circuits fed by this panel wouldn't have had one anyways, and ones that did would have been connected directly to the neutral bar.

American non-earthed socket

This is a NEMA 1-15P, a non-earthed 15A socket used in North America before the advent of earthed types. This is likely a later version, as the slots aren't centred, indicating that it was likely built from the same basic parts as an earthed one.

Czech/Slovak sockets

An interesting thing about power sockets in Czechia and Slovakia is that they're of the "French" style, with a protruding earth pin. In fact, Czechoslovakia was one of the very first countries to make earthed sockets mandatory. Contrary to actual French sockets, however, safety shutters on these aren't mandatory, and the wall box size is of the larger German style rather than the smaller one used in France.