---
name: "Plug and Socket Museum"
subtitle: "A Dutch museum cataloguing every electrical-plug standard"
date: 2026-05-20
link: https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/
source: "Things Magazine"
topics:
  - general-delight
tags: [museum, design, electrical, netherlands]
description: "A Dutch online museum dedicated entirely to the history of electrical plugs and sockets — every regional standard, photographed, dated, and annotated."
---

There are at least 15 incompatible electrical plug standards in active use globally; the Plug and Socket Museum (an online archive run by a Dutch enthusiast) is the definitive catalog. Every regional variant, photographed against a neutral background with the history of why each diverged. The kind of obsessive single-subject archive the internet exists for.