Zinsco circuit breakers

I've never understood, with the fairly high percentage of fires caused by electrical systems, why this country cannot put some "teeth" into device design and quality. Another HUGE issue for me were the spring loaded "screwless" outlet/ switch terminals. I got caught with a problem with these long after I "thought" they had been outlawed..........

When working for the Motorola shop in the mid-late 90's we put together a multi -equipment custom setup in a base station radio enclosure. This consisted of a receiver, a paging encoder/ decoder, a small backup battery, and some other components. The whole deal was a custom built part of a system. I used what was intended to be a 'quality' power strip from a Square D distributor for power. I DID NOT KNOW that the outlets in the power strip were INTERCONNECTED WITH SCREWLESS SPRING TERMINALS

We put it together and tested it in the shop. We then hauled it clear up to Deer Lake mountain.......which is a terrible trail of a road, and miles away from anything--about 40mi from the shop--and installed it in the radio building, which has limited outlets and room..........ONLY TO DISCOVER that one of the outlets was not getting reliable power because of poor connections at these spring terminals.