🚀 go-pugleaf

> ... the telephone company doesn't have to worry about connections
> that get wired up to all the electrical appliances in the house...

Yup, and the phone company goes in heavily for plastic construction.  On
a standard phone, unless you reach underneath for the base plate, the only
metal part you can touch is the dial stop, which is (I think) isolated
from the working parts inside.

Note also that different standards apply, to some extent.  The phone system
is not UL-approved and never will be, barring the day when everything is
done with fiber optics instead of wires.  (The high ringing voltages cannot
be reconciled with UL standards, I'm told.)
-- 
"There is only one spacefaring        Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
nation on Earth today, comrade."   {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry