David Lee wrote:

After the first quarter turn out, the base is isolated. The fitting is
tall enough to make touching the base very unlikely.

These must have been standard since at least 30 years.

Maybe in Holland (I assume that's where ...news.tweaknews.nl... means you
are).

True - these things are different everywhere it seems. The only
fittings that I remember were one could touch a live bulb base were
brass inside and outside with a porcelain isolating ring.

However my experience is very different - only Tuesday evening I had to
check some ES lamps in a school hall very much younger than 30 years and
there was about 1/2 inch of cap standing proud of the fittings. Turned out
not to be a problem as it happened, since some clot had turned off the
circuit breaker for the lighting circuit!

Not good. Edison (and other, I suppose) fittings also have the problem
that they can screw open when onetries to unscrew a bulb. Fittings thus
have some kind of ratchet inside: onde closed they are hard to
impossible to open again, for example to re-do the wiring. Sometmes the
ratchet is a metal plate than can be pushed down with ease. Other times
it is two bits of plastic pointing a bit outwards; breaking them off is
the only way to open the fitting in that case.

I guess that using the most common type of fitting makes sense, wherever
one lives. Implementation is perhaps more important than the basic
principles...


Thomas