Thread: Why do Electrical Things Vary From Country to Country

Short answer is $$$ or that's how things started out in part of that country when electrickery was first used.

At one stage it was even worse when Edison was trying to convince people to use DC for home instead of AC - you should now have enough information to chase that interesting story on the web.

In a more recent context why is there DVD-R and R+ and R- and tripple layer blu-ray whojarwhatsmacallits, and not that long ago VHS versus Beta and even now WIndows V Mac and for a century ford V gmc etc. Its all related to $$$$$$$$. Get your system established as the standard and then write your own cheques.

Originally Posted by BobL

Short answer is $$$ or that's how things started out in part of that country when electrickery was first used.

At one stage it was even worse when Edison was trying to convince people to use DC for home instead of AC - you should now have enough information to chase that interesting story on the web.

Just last week, they shut down the last DC power grid in New York.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...thomas-edison/

Originally Posted by BobL

Short answer is $$$ or that's how things started out in part of that country when electrickery was first used.

At one stage it was even worse when Edison was trying to convince people to use DC for home instead of AC - you should now have enough information to chase that interesting story on the web.

In a more recent context why is there DVD-R and R+ and R- and tripple layer blu-ray whojarwhatsmacallits, and not that long ago VHS versus Beta and even now WIndows V Mac and for a century ford V gmc etc. Its all related to $$$$$$$$. Get your system established as the standard and then write your own cheques.

I love money and all, but geez it makes things complicated.

its getting late now ( or is it early ) but i will look it up tommorow. thanx for telling me what to look for, now i have a basis for some research.

i get what you mean regarding the styles of formatting and all that. i guess it really is the same type of question.

thanx Bob

As they say he who creates the new paradigm wins.

why do we have pc's and macs

for the same reason we had beta and vhs, the new paradigm won, but is was worse than the old one!

Here you go Stirlo, a bit of digging around in Wikipedia might help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

Originally Posted by Big Shed

for the same reason we had beta and vhs, the new paradigm won, but is was worse than the old one!

I think you'll find IBM personal computers (July 1981) pre-date Macintosh (January 1984)

Thanks silent, makes interesting reading, especially the link to 3phase

Interesting to read this part...

As of the year 2000, Australia has converted to 230 V as the nominal standard with a tolerance of +10% -6%.[5], this superseding the old 240 V standard, AS2926-1987

I didn't know OZ had changed the standard to 230V.

thats so they didn't have to upgrade crappy power lines

Yes the government is good at things like that. If you're finding it difficult to achieve a certain level of performance, lower your standards

Like the trains - can't get them to run on time - change the timetable.

Originally Posted by silentC

Here you go Stirlo, a bit of digging around in Wikipedia might help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

thanx silent

Originally Posted by silentC

Yes the government is good at things like that. If you're finding it difficult to achieve a certain level of performance, lower your standards

Like the trains - can't get them to run on time - change the timetable.

Not too many govt instrumentalities left that run electrical networks, or trains for that matter! The privatised utilities don't seem to do any better.

I have a suspicion it is more to do with bringing us in to line with UK-Europe, particularly with electrical appliances now produced virtually anywhere in the world.