The hair dryer incident (a tragedy in 230 volts)
It was a lovely hotel. Fourth floor, a little balcony, a view of a slightly different, slightly more expensive hotel.
Our traveller (let's call her Deb, because that was her name) had packed carefully. Passport. Comfortable shoes. A plug adapter, Type C, purchased at the airport for the price of a small car.
And her hair dryer. 1,875 watts of American muscle. 120 V only.
7:42 a.m.
Deb plugs the hair dryer into the adapter. The adapter goes into the wall. The wall, being French, delivers 230 volts with the quiet confidence of a nation that invented the croissant.
The hair dryer has been designed, lovingly, for 120 volts. It now receives almost twice that. Because power scales with the square of voltage on a simple heating element, it is suddenly trying to be a nearly 7,000-watt hair dryer.
It does not succeed.
7:42 and three seconds
There is a sound. Plugbert has described it to friends as "a duck being told bad news." There is a smell, which is less funny. The hotel's breaker trips, and the entire fourth floor goes quiet, apart from a man in 412 who was mid-shave.
The lesson
The adapter did its job perfectly. It made the plug fit. That's all an adapter does. It does not convert voltage, it never promised to, and blaming it would be like blaming your passport for the weather.
What Deb needed was either:
- A dual-voltage travel hair dryer (look for 100–240V or a little voltage switch), or
- The hotel's own hair dryer, which was, it turned out, in the drawer the whole time.
Deb is fine. The hair dryer has been laid to rest. Plugbert attended the funeral.
Check before you go: United States → France.
Going somewhere? Plugbert will tell you exactly which adapter to pack.
Check my trip