Daft idea's.

[Diabolical Artificer]

Who's daft idea was it to put a circle and a stick/letter I or L on modern on/off switches? I can never remember which is off/on, intuitively one would think the circle would be on, but it isn't, it's off, or is it? Totally confused, what's wrong with off and on, then you know where you are. Why does it matter? If you have a device on the bench that is faulty you have to muck about seeing if AC 240v is present after the SW.

Andy.

[Aerodyne]

Unfortunately we have collectively reached the foreign land known as the FUTURE. Ahead of us lie yet more changes, occurring at an exponentially increasing rate. I do sympathise, really I do... but I am preoccupied with my attempts to understand the ever more inscrutable world around me. What I'd really like to know is, at what point did this process of continuous change (rarely for the better) begin? And was I sleeping at the time?

Unnecessary change for change's sake include (but are far from limited to) decimalisation, component symbolic representation, safety rules and the National Curriculum. Your switch problem is simply the tip of one of many icebergs.
Then again, it could all be down to age - at least, in my case.

Tony

[ppppenguin]

But which load of arrogant futurists introduced this dangerous electrickery stuff when we had perfectly good, safe gaslight.

As for switches, most of the world has down as off. So do we in the UK for fireman's switches. But our light switches and sockets are up for off.

[peter scott]

Then of course there is the question stair lighting. Perhaps we need a small display panel indicating which switch position corresponds to "On"?

Peter

[ppppenguin]

Spring loaded push-to-make buttons with indicator LEDs connected to a latching device. Can be part of a larger home automation system for those who want their IoT home to hijacked by an online attack

[Doodlebug]

And we are loosing all our old names.
Twitter, cloud, gay, rainbow, web and others.

They no longer mean to youth what they
once meant to me.

I remember when spiders had cob webs
and birds once used to twitter etc.

[Diabolical Artificer]

Back to the caves Tony, or maybe as Douglas Adams wrote, it was probably a mistake coming down from the trees in the first place. Depending on who you ask all this progress is a conspiracy so that rich powerful folk can get even richer and more powerful, or we're all mad neurotic monkey men and women who keep having bright idea's with little thought as to the consequences. Take soap for instance or the wheel. That or it's all a plan by some all knowing deity.

"But which load of arrogant futurists introduced this dangerous electrickery stuff " Mostly bored aristocrats or reverends on a big wedge and nowt to do. "As for switches, most of the world has down as off." Yes but we're English, so being eccentric, cuckoo or just plane arkward we must do things differently, it's in the job description : )

"Then of course there is the question stair lighting" Ah, but,you have a handy light that comes on to tell you what the craic is.

"And we are loosing all our old names....." True, am sure my Granny used to read a paper or mag called Gay Times or similar and what about Nigel, Barry and Ethel? It's only the Royal farmily who stick with the old names like William. Seriously but, "English" as a language has always changed and evolved

Whichever, whatever, with the circle and stick on switches someone cocked up. Just saying, it's been vexing me for some time. Andy.

[Terry]

I can never remember which is off/on, intuitively one would think the circle would be on, but it isn't, it's off, or is it?

Andy, would it help if you consider that the circle means 'open' and the line represents a link?

It's a big wide world out there and, with increased mobility, large numbers of us roam far and wide these days and can't expect everything to be translated into English for our benefit. And no, this is not EU related - we had Brits routinely grilling there bodies on the Costa del Sol for years before we even considered joining the Common Market!

There is a lot to be said for conformity - the same signage everywhere, for example - and it doesn't stop there. What would you do if confronted with a mains lead on a piece of vintage kit with black, grey and bright red conductors? [1] (Don't look yet!)

Many, many years ago I used to help a friend who organised trips to the Weize beer festival in Belgium every year. I was always fascinated by large doors everywhere with NOODUITGANG in bold letters painted on them - no signs of any kind. How would you translate that? [2] Of course you might never need to - I certainly didn't, thank goodness.

In the main we use the same road signs as Europe, so we don't have to wonder what they mean. However, on a recent short trip into Eire earlier this year, I was astounded to be greeted with lots of bright yellow US type signs! We were in a coach, so it didn't really matter to me.

So, what would you have done with that mains lead?

[1] Hopefully you would have carried out a few checks with a meter because, pre 1969, black was live, grey was neutral and that very brilliant shade of red indicated earth! I used to transfer a list that I cut out of a magazine into my pocket diary every year which showed the different colours used in a large number of European countries - not just the 6 in the EEC - until someone saw sense and came up with a scheme that was completely different to any of the previous schemes and we've observed it ever since.

[2] Uitgang is very obviously exit but the British mind is most likely to accept the entire word as meaning no exit which could prove rather unfortunate in some circumstances as it really means Emergency Exit!

[ppppenguin]

Incidentally, the Dutch "ui" is approximately pronounced as "ow" so "uitgang" is "outgang" except that "g" in Dutch is gutteral, like the -ch in loch. It isn't easy for most English people to get that even vaguely right.

I'm assuming Flemish is pretty close to Dutch in all of this.

[BusyBee]

With this artificial intelligence it won't matter what is on or off as the equipment will decide what you want (or what it wants lol).

Tracy