WEBVTT - TechStuff Tidbits: Why is there no universal voltage? 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.640 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.759 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at I Heart Radio. 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.000 And how the tech are you? Yeah, I'm gonna stick 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.000 with that one, and welcome to the first episode of 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.920 what I'm calling tech Stuff Tidbits. These will be shorter 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.440 episodes in which I tackle a particular topic in tech 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:34.800 and explain it as quickly as I can, which, uh 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:37.919 actually is not fast at all because I'm from the 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:40.920 southern region of the United States and we have a 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.680 predisposition of turning a two minute story into a forty 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.840 minute yarn. So you know, sit back. But I plan 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:52.440 on bringing these sorts of episodes in on Wednesdays when 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:56.120 I'm not doing like a multipart episode where I'm covering 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.600 a really big part in tech. So here we go, 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:01.640 And the topic I want to talk about today is 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.680 the various voltage standards and electric plugs and outlets you 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:08.319 find around the world. In fact, there are a lot 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.480 of different ones all around the world used by various countries. 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.080 Sometimes you find different ones within a single country, and 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:19.240 that applies both to voltages and two outlets, and anyone 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:22.160 who has traveled internationally knows that this is a thing, 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:24.880 and they can become a real hassle when you're trying to, 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.759 you know, manage travel because of the different outlets and voltages. 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:30.880 So if you bring along something like, I don't know, 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:34.520 your favorite hair dryer or a computer, or you know, 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.480 a charging cable for your phone, you might find that 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.240 you can't plug it into anything because the outlets are different, 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:42.000 and you probably wouldn't want to plug it in if 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:44.520 you could, because the voltage might be different. You can 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.319 even destroy electronics if you plug them into an adapter 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.760 that fits the outlet, but the voltage is drastically different 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:54.080 from your home country. And I thought it might be 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:58.800 interesting to talk about those different standards and why they exist. Okay, 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.280 but let's start with a quicker pressure on electricity. So 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.559 when we talk about electricity, we often refer to stuff 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.480 like voltage and current, and I don't know about you, 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:09.800 but for me, it can get pretty confusing. I always 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:11.960 like to do a refresher on these things. So the 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:14.839 analogy folks tend to like to use is you think 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.919 of it like a water system. So imagine you've got 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:21.919 a big old tank of water with a a faucet 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.520 like a port at the base of the tank. So 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.320 if you open that up, it allows water to flow 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:31.519 from the tank out and maybe you've got a pipe 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.680 attached to the tank. This is your classic gravity system 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.160 that are used by water tanks all over the world, 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.800 all right, So the amount of water that's flowing through 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.000 the pipe when you open up the faucet, that's like 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:49.119 electric current. The water pressure is like voltage. So as 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:53.120 the water level of the tank goes down, the water 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:57.480 pressure decreases because there's not as much weight pressing down 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.440 on the water that's escaping through the pipe. That seems 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.480 pretty intuitive, right. The water pressure goes down, so you're 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:06.720 still having the same amount of water coming through, it's 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:10.920 just not being pushed as hard. Now. An electricity voltage 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:14.400 really describes the potential difference in two points of an 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.200 electrical system or field, and the greater the difference, the 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.519 greater the voltage. And if the potential difference is small, 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.080 the voltage is small. It's kind of like that water 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:27.639 tank analogy. When the water level gets really low. Now, 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:31.920 when you want to transmit electricity over long distances, you 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:33.919 need a good amount of voltage. You need a good 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.440 amount of pressure in order to do that. Now, part 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:38.200 of the reason for that, there are actually a lot 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:39.840 of reasons. We're not going to go into all of them, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:41.600 but part of the reason is that the lines that 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.280 you use to transmit electricity, you know, the cables, they 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.400 are not perfect conductors. And if we go back to 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:51.640 the water analogy, imagine that the pipes have some like 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.320 corrosion or maybe some leaks and stuff in them, and 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.000 this resists the flow of water. Well, in electricity we 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:00.800 see that too. It's called electrical resistance when you're talking 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:05.480 about an imperfect conductor, and conductors under normal conditions are 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.920 all imperfect. Something else we need to talk about is 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.840 direct current versus alternating current. And again we're gonna just 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.760 do really surface level stuff here. So direct current is 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:17.640 what you get when you hook a battery up to 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.599 a simple circuit. Electricity just flows in one direction. Now, 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.120 we can describe current as flowing from the positive terminal 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.520 to the negative terminal, even though the flow of electrons 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:30.840 is in the opposite direction. It goes negative terminal to 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.240 positive terminal. But that's something you're gonna have to take 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.000 up with. Mr Benjamin Franklin the next time you see them. 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:40.360 The electricity always flows in one direction. With direct current, 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.000 it's like a one way street. It starts at one terminal, 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.320 goes through the circuit, ends at the other terminal. That's it. 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:52.800 With alternating current, the direction that electricity flows switches many 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.800 times a second. It reverses. It goes starts at one 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.080 terminal and goes to the other, and then reverses that. 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:00.760 That's going to be part of the a discussion here. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:02.800 As in the good old us of A, where a 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.359 lot of the early working electricity was taking place, you 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:10.360 had people like Nicola Tesla and George Westinghouse making decisions 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.480 to settle on alternating current and at a frequency of 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.920 sixty hurts, that is, changing the direction that the electricity 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:22.719 is flowing in sixty times a second. They saw that 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:27.839 as being best for transmission. Moreover, Tesla and Westinghouse kind 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.159 of wanted to transmit at a voltage of two forty 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:36.440 volts because it was more efficient. If you were to 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:40.240 try and transmit at lower voltages, you had some power loss, 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.039 which means you weren't you know, you weren't creating and 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.120 transmitting electricity as efficiently as you could, which means you're 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.119 actually having to produce more than what you needed because 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.479 you were losing stuff along the way. All right, let's 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:54.559 get back to direct current. So in the early days, 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.760 Thomas Edison, who was Mr Direct Current and his one 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.120 volts d C current, that was the only game in 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.440 town for the most part in the early early days 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:08.200 of the electrification of the United States, and so everything 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:12.400 in the ecosystem ran on d C power, including stuff 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:14.800 like lamps, you know, the stuff that you would actually 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.360 want to run on electricity. It was dependent upon d 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:22.120 C and DC is pretty simple from an engineering standpoint. 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.520 Making devices that run natively on direct current is just 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:29.080 easier to do than something that runs on alternating current. 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.480 We technically for most stuff that runs on a C 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.240 for a lot of stuff anyway, not most, a lot 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:38.719 of stuff, we have to have a device to convert 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:40.840 that from a C to d C before it then 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.799 goes on to power whatever it is we're using. Edison 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:47.159 viewed a hundred ten volts as being a balance between 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.440 safety and practicality. So he thought of a hundred ten 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.400 volts as being a low enough voltage that the average 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:58.000 person wasn't likely to electrocute themselves while using electricity, and 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.560 it would also be strong enough to push current out 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.000 to a decent range. So he thought that the two 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:08.440 forty volts that Westinghouses a C System was proposing was 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.600 being you know, dangerous, and that it was over kill. 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.520 At least that's how he he promoted it. It could 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:16.840 very well be that he didn't think that and he 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.800 was just promoting his own because that was what he 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:22.040 had to offer. But at any rate, that was the 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.520 messaging he gave out that two forty volts would be 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.520 would kill you. By the way, we really got to 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.480 worry about amps more than volts when you're talking about 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:34.120 the deadly nature of electricity. But I've talked about in 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:39.040 previous episodes. So moving back, d C had one big disadvantage, 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:41.800 which is that it is harder to transmit DC over 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.800 large distances, at least it was back in the day. 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:46.960 So it would mean that you would have to build 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:49.400 a lot more power plants, and you have to locate 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:51.800 them close to wherever you were going to be using 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.480 that electricity, otherwise known as the load. So you would 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.760 have to have power plants located near neighborhoods because as 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:01.720 you moved further away from the our generation facility, the 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.200 voltage would drop off and you would kind of lose 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.880 pressure in other words, and the flow wouldn't be strong 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.760 enough to power the stuff you were plugging in. But 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.320 a C could take advantage of something that d C couldn't. 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.760 It could take advantage of transformers. Now, these are simple 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:21.680 electrical components that can boost or step up, or decrease 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:26.280 or step down voltage. It works on a simple electromagnetic 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.720 principle that I'm not going to go into here because 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.120 I have covered it dozens of times in past tech 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:35.360 Stuff episodes. But the important bit is that with transformers, 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.960 you can generate electricity and you can send it out 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.360 at one voltage. You can step that up, you know, 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.480 step up the voltage hundreds of times if you needed 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:48.360 to in order to transmit it across thousands of miles. 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.680 And then once you start getting close to where the 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.439 electricity is going to be used, you have other transformers 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:58.319 that stepped down the voltage and send it on to say, 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:03.600 businesses and homes. Now that's important because if the voltage 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:07.439 remained super high the whole way through the quote unquote 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:10.880 pressure of the electricity would burn out. Your electronics. This 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.320 is what can happen if you just use a simple 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.719 adapter to plug a device into an outlet in a 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.880 country that uses a a you know, higher voltage. So 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:25.360 if you're coming from say the United States, where the 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.000 voltage is volts, more on that later, because that's kind 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:34.280 of tricky, and you go to say the you know, Europe, 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:38.520 where you might run into two two volts and you 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.320 don't have a way of reducing that voltage. The pressure 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:46.360 that voltage is possibly going to destroy whatever it is 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:48.360 you plug into that outlet, even if you have an 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.360 adapter for it. Um or it may make catch on fire, 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.120 you know that kind of stuff. I actually saw an 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:59.480 episode of Sordid Food on YouTube recently, great great channel, 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:03.040 by the way, a bunch of British blokes making food. 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.160 But I saw an episode Unsorted Food recently where they 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.560 got a Japanese toaster and they tested it out on 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:14.320 a British outlet and it immediately burnt out the toaster 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.320 because it was too much voltage. So word to the wise, 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.560 all right, that's some grounding right there, so to speak. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.679 That's a that's a pun. But we're gonna take a 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.119 quick break and we'll be back to talk about voltages 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:37.079 and outlets. Okay, let's get back to talking about Tesla. Here, 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:39.480 he had determined that two hundred forty volts would be 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:41.680 a good starting point because it would lead to less 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.960 power loss when transmitting electricity, but Edison successfully argued that 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.640 to forty volts would be too dangerous, and ultimately Westinghouse 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:53.040 went with a hundred ten volt a C system in 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.840 the early days of the electrification of the United States. 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.120 This would not be as efficient as a two forty 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:01.800 volt system would be, but otherwise it worked just as 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:05.600 I described. So the US moves forward using a hundred 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.439 ten volts, and we'll get back to that in a bit. Meanwhile, 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.520 over in Europe, the various countries were looking at building 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.840 out their own electric grids, but they came to a 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.480 similar conclusion to Tesla. Namely, countries discovered that it would 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:23.800 be more efficient and therefore more cheap to operate if 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:27.480 they pushed out electricity at a higher voltage in order 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:31.520 to send it to customers. Sure, it might be more dangerous, 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.600 but the savings were hard to deny, and so European 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:38.600 countries largely settled on between two hundred twenty two forty 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:42.199 volts for a c transmission. Now, this is in the 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.360 early part of the twenty century. At this point, like 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:50.520 late nineteenth early twentieth century. Now, Europe also departed a 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.160 little bit from Tesla's vision. Because Tesla had said, you know, 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.679 two d forty volts at sixty hurts, you know the 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.920 frequency of sixty hurts. These countries chose to go with 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.640 a different frequency. Uh, the United States was at sixty hurts, 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.920 but most of the countries in Europe went with fifty hurts. Now, 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.040 there are several stories about why Europe went this way. 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.280 Most of them center on the German company a E G. 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.800 A G actually traces its history back to Thomas Edison. 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.680 It it comes out of a company that was founded 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:27.839 by Edison in Germany when Edison was expanding his operations 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:32.360 throughout the world. One story is that engineers observed that 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:37.240 at forty hurts frequency, you could use that electricity to 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.040 power a lightbulb, but the lightbulbs would flicker. You could 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.480 actually notice that they were flickering, And it's because they 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:51.280 were flickering in within the interval of those reversals of electricity, 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.319 because it's doing it forty times a second. However, if 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:58.120 you increase the frequency to fifty hurts, the flicker was 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.760 fast enough so that it was imperceptive. Bowl right, we 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:02.800 would just see it as being a solid light. We 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.079 couldn't see that it was actually flickering. So that's why 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.599 they adopted fifty hurts as their standard. However, that's just 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:15.160 one story. Another story says that the metrics standard sequence 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.920 that the German engineers were using went one to five 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.640 and it wouldn't include six, and so it would be 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:29.360 inconvenient to choose a frequency of sixty hurts because of 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:31.840 the metric standard that they were using, so they chose 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.679 fifty hurts instead. I don't know that that's true. I 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.120 honestly don't know that that's actually the case. These stories 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.679 could be apocryphal, but one way or the other, the 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.319 trend in Europe was to adopt a transmission standard of 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:49.920 around two h volts and fifty hurts. One thing we 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:52.199 can say for certain is that a e G had 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.079 a pretty strong presence, like almost a monopoly, and so 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:01.280 by setting that as their approach, it was probably very 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:05.959 influential for other countries in Europe to kind of follow suit. Um. 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:09.320 But even with that, I don't mean that every place 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.320 in Europe adopted a similar standard. Even in the UK 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.240 you had a dozen or so competing methods in certain 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:20.000 regions up up to like nine I think in London 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.840 at one point nine or ten. There was a clear 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:25.680 need for standardization because it would be kind of a 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.280 nightmare for pretty much everyone involved if you had all 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:33.480 these different outlet designs and voltages and frequencies within a country, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.120 you would have to make stuff for specific regions or 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:39.080 else you would run the risk of your stuff not 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.520 working for all your customers, or worse, causing a fire 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:46.760 or something. It would take the UK decades to adopt 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.280 a fifty hurts standard, and they only did so after 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:53.880 World War Two. But in the intervening years between the 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.400 very beginning of electrification and World War Two, there was 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:02.760 an organization called the International tro Technical Commission that attempted 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:07.080 to create a standardized outlet voltage and frequency to be 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:10.600 used primarily throughout Europe. The group got to work in 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.480 the years following World War One and they were trying 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.840 to get countries to kind of sign on to this 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:22.080 idea of a universal standard. But tensions in Europe grew 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:26.160 not related to electricity and then we had World War 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.320 Two and all the the you know, the projects of 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.000 trying to get everybody on the same page. That obviously 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.880 went on the back burner as all out war was 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.760 breaking out throughout Europe. Now, by the end of World 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.840 War Two, various countries were pretty entrenched in their own 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:47.320 power systems, their outlet designs, voltages, all that kind of stuff. 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.680 Convincing countries to abandon the system they had in place 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.880 in order to adopt a new universal standard, it was 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.000 pretty much a loss cause, I mean every country would 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.960 want to say, okay, yeah, let's have a universal standard. 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:02.560 Let's have it be ours and everyone else can adopt 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:04.440 what we use, because we don't want to have to 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:09.440 go through the incredible expense and the enormous amount of 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:13.360 resources that would take to convert over for us. So 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:16.280 everyone else should just get on the same page that 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.840 we're on. Well, that's what everyone was saying. So you 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:23.560 had these established ecosystems, it would be an enormous amount 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.520 of money and resources in order to switch over to 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:30.120 a new method, so nobody did. Uh. These countries also 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.360 had various colonies and territories around the world. You know, 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.800 this was still in the days of massive colonization. I mean, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:40.360 we're not out of that now, but it was really 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:44.240 prevalent around this era of the twentieth century. So the 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:46.720 grid systems that were set up in places like Asia 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:50.720 and Africa largely mirrored the versions that were present in 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:55.880 the colonizer's home countries, thus proliferating those specific implementations around 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:59.000 the world. This is why you know, if you were 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.280 to travel through Africa, you might encounter different outlets in 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.640 different countries because at one time or another they were, 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:09.880 you know, an extended territory of like France or England. 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:12.720 Now most of the world operates on the two twenty 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:17.000 to two forty volt range. North America and the northeastern 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:19.639 half of South America are mostly on the one hundred 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:24.119 to one hundred twenty seven volt range. And you know 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:26.560 I said that US had switched to a hundred ten volts. 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:30.840 It eventually moved to a hundred twenty volts, but ultimately 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:34.000 the United States chose the two hundred forty volts for 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:39.040 transmission at sixty hurts. But and this is important, the 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.920 US also split that two hundred forty volts into two 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:48.000 one twenty volts circuits. Once the transmission lines arrive at 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.040 a building or house. So we still say that the 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.119 US operates on a hundred twenty volts transmits at two forty. 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.360 But the outlets you see those are one twenty volt outlets. 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.880 And because again the devices we were using would burn 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:05.600 out or worse if we connected them to too high 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.159 a voltage. But big appliances are a little bit different. 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.120 You know, stuff like clothes dryers or electric ovens, which 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.600 require a lot more power than your typical plug and appliance. 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.400 These would use a special neutral wire that would allow 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:22.920 the appliance to a tap in tap into both of 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:29.119 the volts circuits at the same time. So these special plugs, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.280 and if you've ever had to plug in, you know, 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.119 an oven or or a dryer, you've seen these plugs 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:37.200 that don't look like anything else in the United States. 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:42.320 These plug into outlets that provide the full two d 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:47.159 forty volts of electricity because it needs that level of 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:51.320 quote unquote pressure to operate. So this is why you 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:53.560 know you often have to buy a plug for some 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.000 of these, they don't necessarily come with them. I should 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:59.000 also do an episode about how for the longest time, 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.119 UH electronics in the UK didn't come with their own plugs. 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.879 They came with a wire, a copper wire, and you 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.480 had to wire up the plug yourself. But that's for 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.000 a different episode. The U S version of an outlet, 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.879 by the way, is either the Type A or the 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.720 Type B type AS that kind of has just two 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:18.919 slots in it. The Type B that is like one 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:24.800 that has two slots plus the round ground wire approach. 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:27.320 So when you go to different countries, you might need 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:29.680 more than just an adapter to plug your electronics in. 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:32.240 You might need a transformer so that you can change 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:34.560 the voltage in an effort to you know, not turn 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:38.959 your toaster into a flamethrower or whatever, or alternatively make 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.359 sure your toaster gets enough juice so that it can 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:46.680 toast bread. And that is why that happened, because everybody 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.359 was building out their power grids around the same time, 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:53.919 and uh, they all kind of adopted their own internal 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.440 standards and it got to be a big old mess. Okay, 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:00.720 that's the first of tech stuff ad bits. We're gonna 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:02.680 do more of these in the future on Wednesdays. Hope 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.240 you enjoyed it. If you have suggestions for topics, please 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:07.200 reach out to me on Twitter, the handle is text 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.080 stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:19.120 really soon Y. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.159 For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.480 heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:26.480 your favorite shows.