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Harvey Hubbell’s merging of the two primary types of outlets that he helped to design and sell. (Google Patents)

3. Duplex sockets

Where Used: United States

When Used: 1910s-1930s

Related to the rise of the socket plug is the tandem blade, the original format Harvey Hubbell designed when he first came up with the concept of replaceable plugs. Nearly two decades later, he came up with the more common parallel design, which Is still used today, and for a time, both designs were very common on the market. So how to solve for this? Easy, create a power outlet design that can accept both. There were two such types of designs in use during this period: First, a single one-slot outlet with parallel connectors, and if you rotated your plug, a tandem blade. Second, a two-slot setup closer to the standard outlet setup we see today, with a T-shape on either side. That allowed the outlets to take either format for years. In a patent filing from 1914, Hubbell described the setup as such:

Presumably the greater number of plugs now being manufactured have their knife blade contacts in what I will term the parallel relation, but there are hundreds of thousands of plugs in use having their knife blade contacts in what I will term the alined relation. It is, therefore, extremely desirable to provide a receptacle which shall be simple and economical in construction, efficient, safe, and durable and which shall be adapted to co-act equally well with either of the types of plugs referred to above.

The issue that led to this confusing state of affairs was a lack of standardization. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, the organization that helped to standardize the electrical outlet in the United States, came around—and they didn’t really do much of the way of standardization until the 1940s, so that meant some types of power outlets went into use in the U.S. in some kinds of homes … then disappeared when the standards started to emerge.

And that’s why weird half-solutions like the duplex socket existed.

(Wikimedia Commons)

5. Greek Tripoliki Power Outlets

Where Used: Greece

When Used: 1940s-1990s

The problem with not going with a standardized power outlet means that you’re going to be stuck dealing with a lot of legacy years after the fact.

And while the two-pin “Schuko” power outlet quickly became the dominant type of connector in most European countries, there were a handful of stragglers around the region that are largely compatible with one another.

One of a few outliers among international plugs is Greece’s three-pin power adapter, which was in use for much of the mid-20th century before being retired in favor of the dominant Schuko outlet. One point that the Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets raises, which might be interesting to consider in retrospect, was the perceived compatibility of the Greek outlet with French outlets, as they explain here:

The striking similarity between tripoliki and old French plugs and sockets must have a reason. It is a tempting hypothesis that they have been introduced in Greece during electrification work by French companies. Note that the Greek words mpreza (socket) and fis (plug) are derived French words prise and fiche.

Ultimately, if we ever do get rid of NEMA standards, the future of power connectors, outside of the ones we already plug into phones, might look something like an ethernet jack for many electronics. Since 2003, the IEEE has supported the standardization of ethernet connections that pull through both power and data.

(Jordan Harrison/Unsplash)

It’s already a common method for connecting surveillance cameras, and has some significant cost savings in certain use cases. For one thing, it can cut down on the number of cables you might have to put into a wall, while also powering electronics through the same port where the data goes. This concept has also been popularized at the consumer level thanks to USB, particularly the high-powered USB-C and Thunderbolt.

But one has to wonder whether the traditional plugs will ever die, despite the inconsistencies and risks they can introduce. To keep this at a high level, I didn’t even talk about the complexities of different voltages, and the headaches they can introduce across markets. If you’ve ever plugged into an international outlet using a weird international adapter, you know what I’m talking about.

That said, it’d be funny if tomorrow we dropped all our current outlets in favor of, like, these hook outlets that were once used in Germany before the middle of the 20th century.

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