FACTORALY - E10 PLUGS

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

This show looks at plugs of all sorts. From bath plugs to electrical plugs... and beyond. If you can guess what sort of alternative plugs might be mentioned, then you might be in tune with Bruce... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Simon, is it time for one of those Factorily things? Well, I've got nothing else on right now. How about you? Let's do that then. Go on then. Something to do, isn't it, with the day? It is. So, welcome to Factorily. If you haven't been here before, where on earth have you been? If you have been here before, hello again. Hello. It's lovely to see you. What have you been up to? What are you up to right now? Actually, I wonder. I wonder. We sort of generally

meet to record this thing at approximately the same time each week. We're sitting in the same position. I wonder what everyone else is doing. Are we interrupting people's work days? Are people listening to this over their breakfast? Walking the dog? All sorts. What are your podcast listening habits?

Let us know. Drop it in the comments. When do you fact in case you don't know we're both voiceovers we are we sit we sit in padded rooms with nice microphones talking to no one indeed that's pretty much how i describe my job what what have you been we never actually get to explore this this little world of ours what have you been working on recently bruce without giving away any brand names or anything? I've been working on a brand of Belgian chocolates. Oh have you indeed for commercial?

Well yeah given I'm a chocoholic it's very very bad because I kind of do these and I end up, I will now show Simon something which you won't be able to see obviously but these are two Lindor chocolates that I'm just sitting on my desk waiting to be eaten. Now, I am a bit of a Lindor fan myself. Was that a dark chocolate and a pistachio? No, dark and mint. Mint one. Oh, good shout. Oh, very nice ones. Very good.

Very good. Other chocolates are available. No, they're not. No, apart from the Belgian chocolates, available. No, they're not. No. Apart from the Belgian chocolates, which I'm doing the commercials for. Very nice. I'm currently working on some e-learning. I'm producing some examples of English speech for international students learning English as a foreign language.

So it's all terribly well pronounced and clear and slightly slowed down for the younger audience to understand what's going on. Well, there's a thing. Isn't it a thing? So that's us. We talk for a living. And then every now and then we come here and we talk to you, dear listeners. And we empty our minds, which are all full of trivial fact-related nonsense, and we spill it out on you. This is true. Shall I mention briefly that today's episode on plugs may contain material that

some people might find offensive. And you can probably guess which material that will be, given that it's about plugs. Oh, you decided to go down that route. I thought you were joking. Okay. Fine. Okay, so if you're listening to this and you've no idea what Bruce is talking about, maybe this is not the episode for you. I'm going to be very gentle with it, don't worry. Well done.

Good. That's reassuring. Thank you. So this week we're talking, as I mentioned earlier, about plugs. Yes. Lots of different sorts of plugs. Do we know the etymology of a plug? Funny you should ask that. We do know the etymology of plug. It's another one of those words which was invented to describe the thing that it is describing. It's not one of those

words that has changed and morphed much over the years. We first see the word written down, at least, in the 17th century. It's a mixture of German and Dutch. The original word is plog, so that's fairly standard. It simply means to stop up a hole. So it's a verb initially, to stop up a hole, to plug something. And then it became the noun, the thing you use to stop up said hole. I see. There you go.

Because sometimes you can plug things, which means that you actually unleash a whole load of information. When you're plugging a record, for example, or when you're plugging a book. Yes, now that's interesting. I didn't look into the origin of that type of plug. I wonder if the first plugs, in that sense, were sort of slotted in between other things. You know, if you're sort of having an interview with someone on the radio, perhaps, you're just having a quick plug,

you're inserting your advert for something, you're plugging, filling the hole in between other sections. Maybe that's it. Could be that. That's pure speculation. Let's assume that's right. Good. That is now the official answer, according to Bruce and Simon.

Yes, exactly. Talking of filling things in, plugs have been used for, generally they're used for water. So things like bath plugs. Yes. Or there are plugs in reservoirs. Sure, yeah. And canals. In fact, there's a famous plug in a canal in Retford on the River Idle in 1978

when somebody accidentally pulled the plug on the canal and uh retford on the river idle in 1978 when somebody accidentally pulled the plug on on the canal and the entire canal emptied into into the into the river idle had to try and work out where the plug was and put it back in and then fill the canal back up oh my goodness i'm not totally convinced i knew that was a thing so canals have plugs i mean it sort of makes sense, doesn't it? Canals are man-made items. They're filled with water, you know, either completely artificially

or they're led into by a nearby river or whatever it might be. But there's actually a plug hole to drain it. There are actually plug holes in canals. Generally, they vent into nearby rivers. Yeah, yeah. If you went to an aqueduct and uh i'm sure there must be plugs and aqueducts where you could kind of pull one out and the

all of the water would drop down like several hundred feet into the valley below with a satisfying gurgly swoosh yes it goes now would they go clockwise or anticlockwise? I suppose it depends on where in the world you were. See, that's what most people think. It's not true. Gasp. Generally speaking, I mean, I have actually been to the equator and with two sinks, one either side of the line of the equator. You took the sinks with you?

No, they were there ready to be used by visitors. I mean, I pack a lot when I go on holiday, but technically the kitchen sink is not one of the things I pack. And they showed you that if you just pulled the plug out, they would go at random, either clockwise or anticlockwise, regardless of which side of the equator you were on. But it's all to do with literally how you take the plug out. Okay.

So the whole thing about if you're in the northern hemisphere, you remove a plug, the water drains clockwise and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. That's made up, is it? It's complete rubbish, yes. But there was an entire episode of The Simpsons based around that premise, Bruce. It can't be false. Actually, well, The Simpsons is generally scientifically very accurate because a lot of the people who write The Simpsons

are maths graduates from Harvard. Yes. But they're not physics graduates. Well, actually, no, some of them are physics graduates, but I don't think they've done that much research into the way that water goes down right or maybe they were just sort of writing that script secretly sniggering in the background going we know this isn't true that's but the public don't that is absolutely quite possible And then they use plugs in mines.

Right. They make cement plugs to go in mines. Because mines will obviously flood if there's any kind of water coming in. Mines, okay. I was thinking of like a minefield. Ah, right. Yes, sort of mining sort of mines. Right, mines.

Yes, okay. So, yes, if you're mining and digging holes in the ground, so if you get below the water table, the water will actually just fill the mine. So you need some way of pumping that water out or having a plug hole where the water can actually exit the mine through a plug hole. Right, okay. So there are mine plugs as well. There are.

And if the water is coming in through a hole in the top of the mine, then you need a plug to plug that hole in the ceiling. It's usually made of cement. I think if I were experiencing water coming through a hole in the ceiling of a mine, my first response would be to get out of the mine. Get the hell out. Rather than waiting around for someone to bring me a plug. Yes. I mean, the other thing, obviously, that is a kind of a plug is a valve. A valve is a sort of plug.

Except it's a plug that turns within a hole. Yes. Yeah. And the Romans used bronze valves in their canals, funnily enough. Oh, did they? And I, for my sins, used to advertise Rockwell valves.

In a previous life, I was in advertising. And I've actually stood inside a valve that was used in the oil industry. And I'm six foot three. Wow. And I could sort of reach up and just about touch the top of the inside of the valve. It was huge. Goodness me. Although that's not the biggest valve.

What is the biggest valve well as you would imagine the biggest valves in the world are made in texas of course they are of course and the biggest one is 40 feet tall hang on a tick that's um that's big it's it it's about four stories high my goodness and what's the purpose of that? Oil. Oil. It's an oil valve. Right, okay.

I don't think it's made by Rockwell, but Rockwell do make excellent valves. I should just point this out. Good to know. For all your valvy needs. For all your valve needs. So valves in an oil well, that is sort of used to stop and start the flow. Regulate flow. As and when needed.

Yes. So there's some kind of, I'm just sort of trying to picture this in my head, there's some kind of disc or something. Exactly. So generally there is a disc that is the same size and shape as the hole. Yes. And what you want to do is you want to twist the disc within the hole so that it's either sort of like flat onto the hole so that nothing can get through or it's completely sort of in line with the hole so that everything can get through.

So that's quite similar to the sort of bath plugs or sink plugs you get in hotels or public conveniences sometimes where you just sort of jab one side of the plug and it rotates in the centre. So it's just that. So technically that's a valve rather than a plug. Oh, okay. Of course, also valves in the taps, which are kinds of plugs in the taps. So you've got plugs in the taps and valves in the sink. It's very confusing. Goodness me.

I was going to say that's a minefield, isn't it? But we've already done mines, so I won't. So I discovered there was a patent or patent. Either is correct. Either is correct. Either or either is correct. The plug that we sort of recognize now, the rubber bath plug on the end of a chain, was patented in 1959 by a man called Nicholas Treslow of Chicago

and he named it his patent sink stopper. Ah so before I mean I can't believe that people didn't have a patent on or a patent on on plugs prior to the 1950s. I know it's odd isn't it you sort of assume these things have been around since forever. I don't know what the predecessor of that 1959 sink stopper looked like. See, if only the Romans had the foresight to patent things. Yes, and take photos of them so we could see what they looked like. So that was in 1959. And then this really surprised me.

You know a click clack plug no what's a click clack plug click clack plug um is named purely onomatopoeically because of the noise it makes if you have a plug in your sink which uh pops up and you press it and then it sort of sits downwards and as you press it it sort of goes click clack, and then it sort of sits downwards. And as you press it, it sort of goes click, clack. Yeah. And then, again, click, clack to open it up. Does it go clack, click when you open it back up, though? It doesn't because of a blout reduplication, which is something for another episode altogether.

This is the reason we have tick, tock instead of tock, tick and things like that. But that's a whole other area. So the Click Clack, or officially the Pop-Up Plug, was patented only two years later in 1961 by a gentleman called Clarence Victor Isherwood from Massachusetts. Americans, eh? Americans.

So, yeah, the Americans have totally seemed to have the market on patenting their plaques, their plugs. They might have a patent for plaques as well, but who knows? So if the idea is to stop flow, why are electrical plugs called plugs? Well, that goes back to the definition of a plug which is to say that you insert it into a hole. Right. So an electrical plug you put the electrical pins of the plug into the holes of a socket you're plugging up the holes in the socket. Except that the flow of electricity isn't flowing when there's no plug in the hole. But when you put a plug into the socket, the flow is actually encouraged. Well, yes, but then what would be the alternative name? A flow enabler.

No one wants a flow enabler. They want a plug. So electrical plugs, there's an interesting history to this. So when we sort of think of an electrical plug, it's attached to a cord on the end of an appliance, usually a domestic appliance. It's inserted into a socket in the wall which has electricity connected to it. Therefore, the electricity supply gets to the appliance. But when electricity first came into homes, it was purely for lighting. It wasn't for powering appliances. It was purely for lighting. Right.

And it wasn't particularly well regulated. Every socket that was installed to have a light attached to it sort of had its own current, its own voltage, its own parameters and so on. And therefore, the cord going into the socket to connect it to the lights was bespoke to that particular outlet. So it was all a little bit haphazard and obviously quite prone to electrocuting people and spontaneously combusting and things like that, which is not what anyone really wants. I remember when I was younger, many, many, many years ago. All those years ago, Bruce. The light switches in a room were also connected to these small round three-pin sockets. Right. And the small round three-pin, which I think you can still see in some old houses today.

You can still see these old little three-pin round sockets. And the pin holes themselves are circular as well, aren't they? Circular, yeah. Rectangular, yeah. and those were for the lighting so so you could actually switch on all of the the floor lights and the standard lamps and everything from a light switch on the wall which actually was linked to all of the the the mains kind of going around the wall to attach the lights so that one switch would turn on all the lights at once? Yes, rather than having to go round everything and switch on and off each individual lamp.

One by one by one, yes. Oh, interesting. Okay. There's some dispute as to who actually invented the first electrical plug. Was it an American? It depends who you ask. If you ask the Americans, they will say that it was a chap called Harvey Hubble in 1904.

If you ask the Brits, they say it was a chap called T.T. Smith in 1883. Oh, we got there first. Apparently so. Plugs have been around for a while before that, but the first sort of proper pin-based plug that you and I would recognise as the predecessor of the modern-day plug was one of those two chaps, whoever happened to get to the patent office first. So this gentleman, Harvey Hubble, who is generally considered to be the one who invented the electrical plug, he had a history in lighting. He was the gentleman who had previously invented

the pool chain light socket. So you mentioned a light switch, but before that we had pool chains, sort of like on a ceiling fan or on an old-fashioned toilet. You'd have a pool switch. I still have one. Do you? I have two. On your lights?

On my bathroom lights. Technically, you're supposed to have them in bathroom lights. So you either have the light outside the room. Yes. I think for British standard, you have to have either the light switch outside the room or you have to have it on a, what I would call a click-clack. Oh, boy. As a light switch in, like a pool light switch in the ceiling.

There are 15 different types of electrical plug. 15? I know. That's a lot, isn't it? And the UK one is type G. Type G. Type G. We have Type G plugs. Did we have Types A through F before that?

There are an awful lot more before and after G, it tends to be used in most of the places that the Brits used to own, like Malta and Malaysia and Singapore, and actually some of the Arabian Peninsula as well. And it is the safest plug in the world. Is it really? It is, because it has a built-in fuse. Yes, that's true. It does, doesn't it? Now, I think I seem to remember reading that

the introduction of the fuse was a post-war addition to the plugs, that this G-type plug is a post-war creation. So before the war, these plugs, these electrical plugs, used to have circular pins. It was just the standard. That's how things always used to be then after the second world war this g type was invented with the the earth pin and the inbuilt fuse as you said and there was a bit of worry that people would be putting the wrong type of plug into the wrong type of socket if you put the new g type fused plug into an old socket that isn't designed to work with a fused plug all sorts of bad stuff could happen so in order for that not to happen by mistake um the ieee which is the institute of electrical and electronic engineers uh decided yes it would be a bad idea

for people to put the new type of plugs into the old type of sockets and that's why they changed the pins to rectangular so that you physically could not insert that plug into an old style socket and then slowly bit by bit you know more and more sockets were replaced with the rectangular holes to fit the modern pins yeah and we're all happier and safer for it um and then along with that g type came sort of the regulation of the socket so that you could just go and plug any appliance with a G-type plug on it into any of the sockets in your house without blowing anything up or setting anything on fire. So we did mention at the beginning of the show that we would be talking about something a little bit risque. We did, yes. We did.

And there is a sort of plug that has been around since about sort of like 3000 BC. No. And used by Sumerians. And there's actually a bill of sale for a plug that is... Okay, this is... Go on, just say it. Okay, it's a butt plug. There we go.

There we go. And the Sumerians were known to use them almost on a sort of religious basis. Really? There is one of the Egyptian hieroglyphs that they use called the Eye of Horus. Right. And I have discovered that the Eye of Horus is actually Egyptian slang for your anus. Oh, really?

And so the Egyptians believed that the Eye of Horus should be blinded once a day at least. And actually there are jeweled butt plugs and and they were they were recommended medically as well right for um constipation relief and and cure for hemorrhoids okay i i can imagine there were people who had more hemorrhoids than they probably had in order

to get the excuse to go and use the jewelled. It's actually called a cabaram. Cabaram? How are we spelling that? K-A-B-A-R-A-M-N, I believe. Okay, cabaram. Cabaram. Yes, that was a jewelled butterplug. Right, okay, okay. So they've had sort of clinical, medicinal,

and possibly even religious purposes in the past. Yes. Presumably these days they're just used for fun. They are used as toys, yes. Recreational means. Yes. But actually I have a friend who's got one of those lovely glass display cabinets, which is normally full of mice and figurines and beautiful bits of crockery. And his is actually full of butt plugs.

He's got an entire display of very interesting and unusual butt plugs. Right, OK. What other form of plugs have you found? I had a little bit of a search down the line of earplugs. Of course. Again, just like with your previous variety of plug, earplugs have been around for a really long time. The first mention in literature of an earplug is going all the way back to the Greek novel, The Odyssey. I suppose the wax in the ears for the sirens yes precisely that yeah so

odysseus and his chums um are warned of the fact that there are sirens in this particular area that they're sailing to they're recommended to put beeswax into their ears so they don't hear the sirens call and thus protect them uh they weren't called earplugs at the time but that's the first mention of you mention of that. And they've been made out of all different sorts of materials since. Wax seems to be quite a common one up until a certain point. You can sort of mould them to the shape of your ear because they melt slightly. And when they harden, if you put them in there whilst they're still soft and then allow them to harden, they should really sort of mould to the shape of your ear and provide a better sound insulation

in 1962 a couple called ray and cecilia benner invented the first silicon moldable earplug which i guess is sort of the modern day equivalent of the beeswax ones and then the the sort of material that we use now it's that kind of squidgy foamy it's almost like a memory foam type material yes um this material was discovered all the way all the way back in 1967 at the national research corporation in once again america of course and uh this this team were uh doing a project on ceiling joints and they developed this particular resin that had energy absorption properties to it and they called it way before they started using it for earplugs they called it the energy absorption resin e-a-r the acronym of which is ear of course how fortuitous um and then that's that's what it was used for it was used for

sealing joints and then in 1972 it was refined slightly and turned into the sort of the memory foam type material that we got it we know now um which is sort of still the basis of modern day earplugs um they have noise ratings you can get different densities of earplugs to block out different levels of noise depending on where you are and what you're doing so the ones you get on an airplane or something like yeah sort of background noise blocking on an airplane did you know that you can get them in venues for free really yes so if a venue has live music, I think by law, they technically have to be able to supply you with earplugs just to prevent your ears from being damaged by the noise. Right.

So enough so that you can still hear what's going on, but not so much that it hurts. Yes. That makes sense. They're used in industry. They're used in sports racing. They're used in industry. They're used in sports racing. They're used in construction. They're used anywhere where you're regularly exposed to loud noises.

And they have different noise ratings. So the rating sort of depicts how much of a reduction in decibels that plug gives you. Interesting. So an example I found was that if you're riding a motorcycle i found this one because i know that you're a bit of a petrol head i am i am a biker um if you're riding a motorcycle that produces a sound of somewhere around 95 decibels if you wear a an ear a pair of earplugs with a 20 rating, then the noise would be reduced to 75 decibels, which to my mind is still quite loud,

but presumably not quite so uncomfortably loud. I used to have, when I, talking of motors and loud noises, when I used to race cars, in order to speak to the pits, you had to have some sort of way of hearing what the pits were saying as well as a microphone to speak to the pits you had to have um some sort of way of hearing what the pits were saying as well as a microphone to talk to yeah and i had i had several pairs of custom monitor ear earphones made which are basically they take a molding of your ear right and then they put then they actually make uh like an earplug that's exactly the shape of your ear and they put a speaker a tiny little speaker in them

so they are actually the best headphones or earbuds that you could possibly ever have because they fit your ear perfectly and there's no other sound that gets through apart from the sound in the speakers So there we go in the speakers.

So there we go. That's lots of different types of plug. Do you have any other plug-related info for us, Bruce? I don't, but I was just thinking, when you were mentioning earplugs, I was thinking about nose plugs as well. If you're doing something which is in a very smelly environment, you can plug up your nose with a nose plug.

Can you? You can. I didn't know that. It does make you sound very weird. I would imagine. Because you're not talking like that at all. But, you know, nose plugs are a thing. Right, okay.

Ear plugs, nose plugs, plugs for the other end, all sorts of different plugs for your body. Plugs for the other end, all sorts of different plugs for your body. Plugs everywhere. Because in the old days, just thinking about that idea of nose plugs, going back several hundred years, everything was a little bit smellier than it is now. Everything's sort of quite clinical these days. But people used to carry around with them something called a nose gay. I've heard of this. This is like something that you sort of smell to avoid the noxious smell.

Does that remind me? Yeah, avoid the noxious smell. Remind me? Yeah, so you pretty much bang on. So it's a little, is posy the right word? I think it probably is. I'm going to go with it is. A little cloth bag or a pouch or sometimes. Like a mobile potpourri.

A mobile potpourri. There you go. Best way of describing it. a little bag of herbs spices petals whatever it might be that you could hold up against your nose and you know use it to mask the smell of the the well not necessarily the countryside because that's quite a nice smell but if you're walking through central london a few hundred years ago it's probably not so sweet um and they even had some of these nose gaze could fit to the end of your your cane your walking stick so you would just hold your cane up against your nose and it would make

everything smell better for a short while or alternatively just fill your nose with wax there you go simple well there we go i think um we we may well have just had the longest conversation anyone has ever had about plugs. If all of our dear listeners have enjoyed listening to us rabbit on, please do all the things you're supposed to do with podcasts. Give us a plug. Hey.

With your friends. Indeed. Review us. Like us. Like us. Share us. Comment on us all those things

yeah all those sorts of things don't leave us on the end of a chain no dangling dangling around the taps so thank you very much

and we look forward to seeing you next time when we talk about something else indeed at random for about half an hour

give or take yeah thank you for joining us see you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye now.