Importance

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Abstract

A sensing conductor (62) within an appliance housing (56) and a detection circuit (59, 60, 61, 63) preferably within the housing, cause a low resistance shorting of an appliance circuit (57, 58) in response to immersion in water, and an interrupter device (4, 5, 6, 27), preferably located in the plug (65) of the cord set, reacts to the resulting overcurrent by opening two fuses, one in each side of the line (2, 16; 3, 17). An overcurrent opens one fast acting fuse link (27) in the normally ungrounded side of the line (3, 17) and such fuse link (5) in the normally grounded neutral side of the line (2, 16). The fuse link (27) is directly assisted in opening by a spring element (4) so as to have a slight precedence in opening, over fuse link (5) which is indirectly assisted in opening by spring (4), through an insulating coupling block (6), to achieve an initially sequential but substantially overlapping and simultaneous opening, thus disconnecting both sides of the line.

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First Claim