“13 Amps Ought To Be Enough For Anybody”
Thinking of submitting this as a proposal for a five-minute talk at the Web 2.0 Expo Ignite night. What do folks think? Sound interesting?
“13 Amps Ought To Be Enough For Anybody”: A tribute to the Great British plug!
The curse of the business traveller. You leave the comfy confines of your native habitat, and find your laptop running low on juice. “No problem!” you think, reaching for your power pack. But drat and alas! The power socket is in some crazy configuration which denies entry to your humble two-prongs.
Rod Begbie proudly dons his nationalistic hat, hurrahs a hearty “Rule Britannia”, and romps through the history of that oddest of designs, BS 1363, or “the British plug”.
As we webbies attempt to design front-ends and APIs that we hope upon hope could be used for as many as “a few” years, take a look at the choices made in the 1940s which still affect every toaster, lamp and fifty-inch-high-definition-plasma-widescreen-surround-sound-home-entertainment-system on that sceptered isle.
On Tuesday, February 17, 2009, Dad commented:
Do the prongs matter - as long as it is generated from renewable sources?