With Fuses, Is Half Enough?

fuse box

What you are looking at here is a picture of the fuse box in my apartment. It is a pretty old apartment building, and the fuse box certainly betrays this. On the right side of the photo you can see the hand written notes identifying which circuit each fuse is attached to. Of the four fuses, only two have meaningful labels “lights” and “plugs,” the other two being vaguely labeled “?

In an apartment this size, you would think that discovering the true identity of any fuse’s circuit would not be all that difficult. Only identifying half of the circuits is pretty poor performance. This exam would need a heck of a curve to make this fifty-percent a passing grade.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire’s “50-50” assist could be pretty useful here. Although, it might also turn out to be entirely useless!

1 comment

  1. Just like mine was in Cicero, IL, outside Chicago. Fortunately they updated to modern circuit breakers while I lived there.

    However, my grandmother’s house in Wisconsin still makes use of these things…

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