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If we have "Plug Tops" why don't we have "Socket Bottoms"?

As per the Subject really. This expression "Plug Tops" has puzzled me for years.


I can understand confusion with D-Sub Connectors where the Plug has a Female Body and Male Pins and vice-versa. Trying to describe a D-Sub Gender Changer is like explaining the Rules of Cricket:-

"You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game."


Clive

  • From a standards perspective, we only have plugs or plug connectors to describe the types of devices you are referring to.


    In terms of the development of the English language, I think we have far less control and it is what it is.


    For example, the term plug socket is often used, but I am left wondering whether it refers to the plug or the socket-outlet, and I guess (hopefully correctly) it's the latter ?


  • I am old school so I call 13A plugs plug tops. 


    Clive


    I have seen your post elsewhere on TACAN.


  • I was under the impression it was from the days before standardization, where you'd purchase an electrical 'plug in point' as a plug socket, and a plug top, sold as a single item.


    I too am oldschool and refer to them as plugtops
  • How old do you have to be, to be old school? I am approaching 71, yet other than on this website, I have never heard of a Plug Top.


    So I am wondering whether "Plug Tops" is a regional thing?


    Trevor Linsley's "Advanced Electrical Installation Work on page 354 refers to Plug Tops. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1vcJBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT364&lpg=PT364&dq=plug+top+definition&source=bl&ots=3HF2TTWa37&sig=ACfU3U2jUsnR1qeyAwH-5Pw3YTapj9QOCA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjm-onFvN7nAhVNURUIHbvdB4s4ChDoATAEegQIChAB#v=onepage&q=plug%20top%20definition&f=false


    Tool Station not only sell Plug Tops but also Plug Top Fuses, as do CEF and TLC... Screwfix don't!

    Clive


  • John Peckham:

    I have seen your post elsewhere on TACAN. 



    Nice find!  ?

    I have been threatening myself to get on with my website, so recently have been hunting on eBay for some suitable memorabilia to photograph etc. The Belfast one arrived yesterday. 


    Clive
  • I thought it was because non electrical people used to call sockets wall plugs so the bit we know as a plug became the plug top I was told this by an electrician back n he 1980s. What really gets my goat is when people usually computer types call a socket a port  I have to correct them it just grinds my gears
  • I am a mere babyish 47, but the chap who trained me, my Mentor as it were, was approaching retirement age when I began as a YTS lad in 1989.  I learned it from him and other chaps in the workshop.


    It may be regional, but I suspect it's simply a random choice, all the electricians in the workshop were between 35 and 60, but there was no correlation between age and whether they thought plug top was 'correct' or 'silly'. All were fairly local to the area (central southern Hampshire)


    I wonder if it's the same as lamp vs lightbulb. Lamp is the correct term but makes the public go ?

  • Do you plug a starboard into a port then? or is port a USA term, or maybe you sail a ship or boat into the port
  • I personally don't use the term 'plug top', but I think it is more than a regional thing, because there are several references in manufacturer's documentation.


    For example, Bussman refer to BS1362 fuses as "British Plug Top Fuse"  https://docs.rs-online.com/9819/0900766b8002b71e.pdf


    There is also an interesting use of the term in the MK catalogue technical data for the Masterseal range... 

    Sealed when in use with virtually any standard 13 Amp plug, including those with moulded on plug tops





    and in the floorbox section, they also talk about clearance for "transformer plug tops".



    edit: another example, Lawson call it a Plug Top Fuse-Link ... https://04646a9cf351cc0d3888-b8b406d15fe93f790abb5bf0e9ab7ab3.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/downloads/product/lawson_type_l-pl_datasheet_414aad9656469bf9cad3b89f7a2cc0c5.pdf?1467626279
  • PS I am a plugtop type, a socket is a socket not a wall socket or plug socket