Sadly true. I’m reminded of the famous description of how companies built TVs…
They hired a good engineer to create a reliable design. Then they had someone randomly remove components, one by one, until it stopped working. Put the last one removed back, and ship!
That’s the way to keep costs down! Probably apocryphal, of course…
You are thinking of Madman Muntz and his technique of “Muntzing”:
Muntz developed a television chassis that produced an acceptable monochromepicture with 17 tubes. He often carried a pair of wire clippers, and when he thought that one of his employees was “overengineering” a circuit, he would begin snipping components out until the picture or sound stopped working. At that point, he would tell the engineer “Well, I guess you have to put that last part back in” and walk away.[14]
Quoted from Madman Muntz - Wikipedia.
Muntz got away with this technique because he sold TVs only in the metro NYC area where signals were strong. His TVs did not work so well in the more rural areas with weak signals (the stuff he chopped out were frequently the sections that helped with weak signal reception).
It seems to me that Muntz had to have at least some working knowledge of circuit design to be able to do that. Because, while some components might only be needed for weak signals, if you just cut something at random, you probably will hit something that the system as a whole needs. Heck, even if you cut something that isn’t actually necessary, it might be in series with something that is, so it still won’t work.
Yes, Muntz had some self-taught engineering skills. At the risk of continuing the hijack, here is a more detailed article about Muntz and his TV cost cutting (written by a late legendary curmudgeon of the EE industry):
And that could only ever possibly refer to Bob Pease. A legend indeed.
This is what i carry when i travel. I used to have a heavy adapter to change the voltage. Then i looked at the fine print on my electronics. Every device i travel with is rated for 100-250 volts, so i stopped worrying about anything beyond, “does the plug fit into the wall”. I have a bunch of adapters for the EU, one for the UK, and maybe something i bought for Australia. Although i was surprised visiting Japan – a lot of my power supplies want to be grounded, and i never saw a Japanese outlet with a third hole. So i bought a cute pokemon-themed power supply at the Anker store for all my USB-C devices. (Japanese wall outlets are just like US ungrounded outlets, so this works just fine at home, too. And it’s small and makes a nice travel power supply.)
(I understand that things with motors, blow dryers, electric kettles, and clocks don’t work with just a plug adapter. I don’t travel with any of those, i use ones available locally.)
Because Japanese circuits are protected by GFCI, it wasn’t until 2022 that grounded outlets were required for bathrooms, kitchens and outdoors.
Unless you stay in brand new hotels, you won’t see them.