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An inventor by the name of Min Kyu Choi has developed a brilliant folding UK plug, which nabbed him the runner-up prize in the 2009 James Dyson Awards.
A prototype was on display at a recent showcase in London, where a spokeswoman from Dyson took us through how it works.
The final design is waiting for certification from the British Standards Institute, and hopefully we'll soon see these brilliant units in electronics shops everywhere.
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Have your say
The safety of US plug
I wonder if there were more reported child casualties caused by the unsafe (from UK point of view) US plug. How about adding more safety mechanisms on the socket side? I think most UK frequent travellers are frustrated by the bulky heavy UK plugs of their gadgets.
Posted by: Eugene 28 Aug 2010
More style than substance
Firstly, the frankly ignorant, disingenuous and needlessly rude comment by "Ben" below speaks for itself in ways that the writer did not intend... ...David's points are well made and I agree with them. So far as the plug goes, this is admittedly a nice piece of lateral thinking. However, as others have said, it is sadly rendered useless in its current form by safety issues. No-one will be celebrating the design if it results in the needless death of a child, the avoidance of which was one of principal reasons why the BS1363 standard plug was devised in the first place. I would also be interested to know how the design avoids problems of metal fatigue in the flexible leads that must surely be used to connect to the phase and neutral pins. If its present issues could be addressed by some re-design, it would be a neat and attractive solution. The special three-way adaptor based is especially attractive but again fails to address the fundamental safety issues.
Posted by: Majkic 01 Jul 2010
to david
Am I to assume that your remark about this design being recognised with (deserved) awards being responsible for the downfall of societal values either a) an attempt at irony, or, b) the opinion of a cretin? If society fails tomorrow, I'm sure it will not be due to a 13 amp plug design. Your statement to the contrary is, quite frankly, bullshit.
Posted by: Ben 28 Jun 2010
Pretty design, but impractical and dangerous
It is quite wrong to say that British Standards gets in the way! The BS 1363 standard was introduced in 1947, one of its main objectives was to end child deaths due to electrocution from plugs and sockets, and it has succeeded brilliantly. There are two very obvious errors in the Folding Plug design (quite apart from whether the moving parts are up to doing the job). One is that the safety barrier in this design is optional; this is because you do not have to fold out the sides to be able to insert the plug. That is completely unacceptable, safety must be inherent. The standard requires 9.5mm from the pins to the periphery of the plug; this design has 3mm along the length of the rotating part and 0mm at the ends. The other obvious error is that access to the fuse must be impossible when the plug is in use, this design has the fuse accessible at all times. The existing design of folding plug on the market, SlimPlug, does not have these problems, the ThinPlug, currently awaiting regulatory approval, has also been designed with safety in mind. Perhaps it is because those two designs come from engineers, not an art student who can create something attractive, but clearly has no understanding of engineering design. BS 1363 and the Plugs and Sockets regulations are in place to stop dangerous products being foisted on the unwary by the ignorant. The fact that the Folding Plug has been awarded several prestigious design awards tells a very sorry story about the values of our society.
Posted by: David 05 Apr 2010
safety issues
There have been so many concept designs before to make the UK plug smaller but British Standards has always been in the way. I can see so many problems with this concept mainly the moving live pins and the fuse housing. I hope it does get safety certification but I am quite sure that it will not be in its current shape and size. In any case there is already a plug being launched any moment now called ThinPlug and it has taken them 4 years so far to get certification and has much more moving parts and hard wired live pins that does not move. www.thinplug.com my bet is on them? .
Posted by: Richard 11 Jan 2010
Absolutely Brilliant
I need this now!!! Hope it makes it into production soon. And the health and safety fascists don't get in the way
Posted by: PC 26 Sep 2009
uk folding plug
Good for storing the lead into tool boxes.
Posted by: denis parsons 21 Sep 2009
Such a great Idea
Cant believe nobody has come up with an idea like this before, not sure whether it will work for every appliance but i imagine it will be great for products like laptops which you always carry in your bag
Posted by: DD 19 Sep 2009