Is it time to rethink the plug?

BS 1363, the British standard that defines our plugs and sockets, recently had its 70th birthday. The fact that this landmark passed without so much as a fanfare or celebration is a testament to just how invisible this design icon has become in our lives.

But there's been a lot of changes in those 70 years, is there anything we would do differently now, or improvements that we could make? The standard has had a number of minor tweaks over the years, but are there any more dramatic changes we could consider?

Size

When the plug was originally designed the number of electrical devices people had in their homes was very few, so having big chunky plugs was not an issue. Since then the number of devices we have has skyrocketed, so having smaller plugs and sockets would be more beneficial for plugging all these devices in a smaller area.

Part of the success of the plug's longevity is probably down to its over-engineering. Those big chunky rectangles of metal ooze confidence in making a good connection. If you look inside a socket though, you'll notice the actual contact area between plug and socket is only a fraction of that surface area, and very much reliant on spring pressure. A similar suitable connection could be made in a much smaller space, particularly if the process of plugging it in or switching it on also locked the connectors more firmly against each other.

Move the switch

Many devices are always on these days so don't need a switch. If you move the switch from the socket to the plug then the manufacturer (or consumer) can decide if a switch is required or not.

Replaceable leads

When the standard was designed it only covered the connection between power cable and power source. The connection at the other end between power cable and device was left very much up to the manufacturer. The result is a number of different connectors are used, some more propriety than others, while some devices have their cables hardwired in.

If there was a standard for both ends of the power cable, this would allow cables to be easily replaced when they got damaged, when they weren't quite long enough, if they weren't quite the right colour to match your decor, or if (like me) you want all your cables to be exactly the right length.

Fire safety

When people need more sockets than they have they just plug in an extension strip. The problem is there is nothing to stop people plugging extension strips into extension strips or several high power devices into the same extension strip. The result is it's very easy to overload a wall socket without realising it and create a fire risk.

If the plugs and sockets had slightly different flavours for different ampages (say 13A, 5A, 3A and 1A) you could ensure a socket didn't get overloaded with the following rules;

• All wall sockets are 13A.
• 13A plugs can only be plugged into 13A sockets.
• 5A plugs can only be plugged into 13A or 5A sockets.
• 3A plugs can only be plugged into 13A, 5A or 3A sockets.
• 1A plugs can be plugged into any socket.
• extension strips can only have plugs totalling up to the power coming into the extension strip, so a 13A strip could have 4 3A sockets or up to 13 1A sockets. It's probably wise not to allow any device over 3A to be plugged into anything other than the wall.

To ensure people didn't cheat, you'd need a similar scheme for the plugs/sockets for the connection at the device end, but this could be a simpler mutually exclusive arrangement (1A only to 1A, 3A to 3A, etc.). This would also ensure you replaced a cable with one that can handle the correct ampage for the device, without having to insist they all can handle 13A.

Dual voltage

Currently, different countries not only use different plugs but different voltages too. If we could redesign a plug to cope with this, this could become a plug for the world! There are many shapes of plugs around the world, but generally 2 voltages ranges are common, these being 220-240V and 110-120V.

We could have (yet more) flavours of plugs and sockets for handling these 2 ranges with the rules;

• 220-240V plugs would plug into either 220-240V or dual voltage sockets.
• 110-120V plugs would plug into either 110-120V or dual voltage sockets.
• Dual voltage plugs would plug into any socket.

Once these plugs became prevalent you'd probably find that houses would be built or rewired to have a converter fitted in the fuse box such that all wall sockets were dual voltage. Certainly dual voltage sockets would be great for hotels. But in the interim, a lot of people would be using plugin converters from the old standard to the new that would just be single voltage.

The Internet of Things

Maybe the biggest change we could consider would be to include a network connection into the plug. More and more devices need a network connection these days and their number is only going to increase. Building this into the plug basically guarantees devices the fastest connection in the simplest of ways. This could be the plug for the Internet of Things!

Manufacturers would no longer need to think about whether to including WiFi in their devices just in case there isn't a LAN socket available nearby where it's going to be used. In an increasingly digital world, digital devices would only need one cable going in and out. How easy would that be to set up!