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Oh, man, that plug! 
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Yesterday, I bought a Sinclair ZX Spectrum - cost me £20, but it was boxed, had manuals and cables included. It was “sold for spares” which can tend to mean they couldn’t be bothered to try on a normal telly. Well, the Spectrum does work, so that’s good.

The thing of interest is the plug on the mains adapter. It’s not a standard plug from the time. It looks like this.
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This brown beast must be from the 1960s, and while it looks pretty robust, it will need to be swapped for a more modern and safer one - as the Spectrum may well end up in the school when we’re doing end of term fun with the kids, I think this is necessary. I’ll keep the plug as a curio.

You’ll notice that the plug has a switch on the front. That actually turns power on and off. Possibly made from bakelite, so I expect it’s either pristine inside, or going flaky.

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Wed Oct 17, 2018 10:38 am
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60s mains wiring!

The house I grew up in during the 60s and 70s had very "interesting" mains wiring. In my bedroom I had 3 sockets - a 15amp round pin, a 3amp round pin and a 13amp "modern" socket. Only the round pin sockets had on/off switches. In fact IIRC none of the 13amp sockets anywhere in the house had switches apart from the one by the cooker, so I suspect plugs like the one pictured would have been very useful back then.

I also suspect that the wiring would all have been rubber insulated single conductor. I spent most of the 80s helping friends strip this out of houses they had bought and replacing it with the correct twin conductor plus earth cable. By that time the insulation on most of the original wiring of it was very close to disintegration.

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Wed Oct 17, 2018 12:17 pm
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There's a chap I follow on youtube (whose name escapes me) who might be interested in the plug and assessing it.

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Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:20 am
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There’s a website about plugs. OF COURSE THERE IS!

Anyway, a reference to something similar (but white) on this page:
https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/British3.html

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Thu Oct 18, 2018 11:50 am
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My Mums house still has a few 3 pin round sockets - we have a number of adaptors that convert from round to square. (The house is finally being re-wired and she is having sockets with USB ports added where logical)

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Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:12 am
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Reminds me of my nan's old house.

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Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:34 pm
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A friend asked me if I could get to the switch to show the mechanism. So far, I can’t. The plug is made of three slices. The top slice comes off, so you can wire it. The bottom two slices seemed fused together. They could be joined by the security bolts at the top of each pin (I don’t have any tool I can get those off with), or the plastic itself was fused together after the switch assembly was finished. I guess as that part of the plug is deemed to dangerous for people to get to.

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brataccas wrote:
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Fri Nov 02, 2018 11:44 am
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