N. Thornton wrote:
Mike Clarke wrote in message ...

ah, Clix plugs. The wires were pushed under the folded pins, and
screwing the top on pressed the pins onto the wires. no cordgrip. I
think theyre famous for worrying people.

The dreadful 'Clix' was not the only sort of 5 A plug with a top that
could be unscrewed by hand. I still have some WG (Ward & Goldtone)
brand ones I bought from Woolworth's as a kid, and which had a similar
feature. These at least used screws to hold the wires in place :-).
Another tendency of the Clix plug was for strands of wire to free
themselves from the pins over time and eventually cause a short-circuit
when you moved the flex - nice.

* There were some really weird plugs with a central round earth
pin and flat power pins to either side of it. They came in 2 (or
more ?) different sizes and ratings. The larger ones had a
socket for a lower rating built into the cover so you could
piggy back a smaller plug off them. ISTR the plugs had cartridge
fuses and were designed in such a way that the lower rated ones
could also be inserted into higher rated sockets.

not heard of those before.

That's the Wylex design that was a serious alternative contender to the
13 A 'square pin plug' (as people called it then) in the late 1940s for
use with the new ring circuit system. Yes there were stackable versions
and I believe they were widely used in government scientific
establishments at one time. Who first designed what we now know as the
BS 1363 plug and why it was chosen over the Wylex versions are questions
I've never seen answered - although a good guess might be that it was
considerably cheaper to produce than the Wylex.

--
Andy