Why do Electrical Things Vary From Country to Country

[ss_11000]

harro

Just wondering why you have to go thru the trouble and extra expenses of having to by a transformer thingo to buy tools from the US. why dont we all (every country in the world ) use the same electricity type???

I used to think the same about money as well ( why we all dont have the same curency ) but found that to be because of inflation and other such causes but cant figure out ( mind i havent really looked into it ) why we use different electrical thingoes ( see i dont even know what the thing i'm talking about is called )
why do the US use 60 hz and we use 50 ( is that right ) and all that kind of stuff ( 240 v compared to whatever ) is what i'm really asking, why dont we all use the same?

i'm not very good on electrical terminology so keep it simple for me please.

TIA

[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.

[snowyskiesau]

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/

[ss_11000]

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

[Barry_White]

As they say he who creates the new paradigm wins.

[echnidna]

why do we have pc's and macs

[Big Shed]

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

[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

[silentC]

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)

[Big Shed]

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

[Uncle Bob]

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.

[echnidna]

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

[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.

[ss_11000]

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

[Big Shed]

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.