Text 36466, 77 rader
Skriven 2016-09-10 14:46:01 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
  Kommentar till text 36465 av Tim Richardson (5141.fidonet_fidonews)
Ärende: 230 Volt
================
Hello Tim,

On Friday September 09 2016 19:10, you wrote to me:

 TR>> Wouldn't know. I didn't take anything there that was electric, and
 TR>> didn't buy anything electronic there either, so it didn't affect
 TR>> me.

 Mv>> So your rant was all hearsay. Figures...

 TR> No, it wasn't "...all hearsay." It was from watching guys plug in that
 TR> nice electric razor they'd brought along from the states, turn it on
 TR> for a shave, and all the smoke it made burning out!

You could not have watched them "plug in that nice electric razor they brought
along from the states". As I mentioned before, you can not just plug it in,
there is no way you can ram a Nema plug into a Schuko socket and have it make
contact.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/NEMA-AC-Power-Plugs.jpg
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/schuko-socket-26547093.jpg

 TR> Not "...hearsay." at all.

What you claim to have watched could not possibly have happened that way you
describe it. 
 TR> Sometimes the German national workers at the PX's would tell you about
 TR> what it needed to make a nice new RCA radio or Remington shaver work
 TR> properly, and sometimes they didn't.

Why woud they? What did you do for them?

 TR> Most of the German nationals utterly hated Americans back then because
 TR> we had just got done kicking the shit out of their Army less than
 TR> twenty or so years earlier.

Are you sure they held a grudge for only being second in WWII? Or maybe they
were pissed off that twenty years after the war, the US occupational force was
still there? If the US had been second in WWII, would you be delighted if there
were still German occupational forces in the US, twenty years after peace had
been signed?

And BTW, it was not the US, it was the Russians who beat the Germans. The US
just helped in speeding up the end game.

 TR>  Germans hold grudges a long time.

Do they? Or did they just want you to leave? Did you never see the signs
"Yankee go home!"? Did you never wonder what you were doing there anyway twenty
years after the war?

 TR> They got a charge (no pun intended) out of watching some unsuspecting
 TR> GI spend a hundred or more dollars on a stereo at the PX, only to plug
 TR> it in and burn it up the minute they turned it on.

And you just watched that happening and did nothing to warn your fellow
Americans? Or was that hearsay after all?

 TR> I had a straight razor kit, didn't bring or buy any radios or
 TR> electronics, and just didn't have that problem. But watched as the
 TR> magic smoke got out of more than a few electronic pieces of equipment
 TR> other guys in the barracks plugged in and turned on, but were not
 TR> smart enough to find out about the electricity first.

It is the penalty for the US arrogance of assuming that everything in the whole
wide world is the same as in the US and if it isn't, people in the whole wide
world will want it to be the same as in the US.

Tough luck. Our electric power is 230 Volts 50 Hz. Imperial troopers stupid
enough to take it for granted that their imported equipment can be plugged in
just like that get what they deserve...


Cheers, Michiel

--- Fmail, Binkd, Golded
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