Comments by "Halfdan Ingolfsson" (@Halli50) on "Technology Connections" channel.

  1. This reminds me of the joke about the eating, drinking and smoking habits of various nations versus their mortality rates due to obesity and heart disease. The punch-line of that joke was that it hardly mattered what you ate, drank and smoked, being an English-speaker was apparently fatal. This seems to apply to silly choices when it comes to handling household electricity, English-speakers seem to take the cake.
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  2. Yep, you have 240V AC "at your disposal", but how do you use it? Choosing to split the voltage means that EVERY cable, wire and extension within a home has to contain twice the amount of copper for a given amount of power. A kettle or toaster using 1500W of power will need a cable that is twice as heavy as their European-equivalent devices, and your cables, plugs and receptacles are clunky. REALLY CLUNKY! Having earned my Journeyman's certificate as an Electrician in 1972 I am always blown away seeing your ancient "modern" hardware! Junction boxes, cabling and, well, everything else has not changed since WW2! This certainly makes for long-term consistency, but it also proves that you are completely, utterly stagnant. Funny thing is, you can blame this whole "high-voltage phobia" on your favorite inventor, Edison. Even funnier, your 120VAC will kill you just as handily as our European 220VAC! What is the difference? The overhead-line-power-distribution system (3:13) commonly used in the US is a disaster! Any weather stronger than a breeze will blow this over (or knock over an old tree, same end result). You will rarely, if ever see this in European suburbs.
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