"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arny Krueger wrote:
We did not have the "cleansing" effects of a world war fought in our
country to push us along. Also, electrical distribution had a very rapid
and early introduction so we have a ton of very old work that is still
in use.

It's not binding on the rest of the world but the town I lived in in
Germany looked like it had been reworked from top to bottom *after*
WW2. We had 416 3 phase in our apartment for heating water.

AFAIK the nearest three phase distribution point here to my house here
in Grosse Pointe is about a half mile away. Our church here in town has
a number of 3 phase motors and it has its own 3 phase line and separate
pole transformer for just that phase.

I've never quite understood why so many US towns seem to have overhead
wiring for mains. It's very unsightly.

When these places were wired (1910-1935), underground wiring was
prohibitively expensive. Underground became the rule in the 70's.