Wire is lovely. A safe haven of conductivity, hidden from the world inside some innocuous plastic insulator. It's a disgraceful copy of the axon, but I'll let that slide. Now, wires are often used to make circuits, these are often complex. They need testing. Frequently, the conductor is not accessible, either because it's simply difficult to get to, or because you can't get to the end when the wire is in use.
How about little ports in the wire? I'm not talking about regular holes, that would just be bad wire. I'm thinking of those self-sealing rubber thingummies they have in the medical world for injecting through. They allow you to push a hypodermic needle through 3-4 mm of rubber, inject and then withdraw and the rubber manages to seal itself behind.
If this were on wire at, say, 10 cm intervals, you could insert a specially sharp probe and use it to test wiring, or indeed connectors... if one connector out of a pair is faulty, it would be useful to be able to test the wire non- destructively to establish which one.-- bs0u0155, Jan 15 2015 In days of auld, wire was cloth-wound and wax-dipped, so you could poke a hole in it with a pointy lead, that would seal itself back up if you rubbed the wire the right way.
anyways, poking a hole in a plastic-insulated wire doesn't compromise the usage, except maybe it's not as waterproof as it was.-- FlyingToaster, Jan 15 2015 Inspection ports should be little transparent inserts in the casing, to allow inspection. Yours are more like probing ports.-- pocmloc, Jan 15 2015 Well, I could care less* about the visual properties, I wish to inspect the electrical properties, wires aren't there to look nice**
* I mean that, I really do care a little bit about them, if horrible corrosion has taken place for example... this is one up from "I couldn't care less..."
** although I once owned a very nice point to point wired guitar amp that gave me inappropriate feelings.-- bs0u0155, Jan 15 2015 But won't the holes let all the smoke out?-- Ling, Jan 15 2015 that's what makes things work, which is why we need the self sealing part.-- bs0u0155, Jan 16 2015 // inappropriate feelings. //
<Holden>
"Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about... your guitar amp ..."
<Holden>-- 8th of 7, Jan 16 2015 It was the only amp that, with about 15 pedals, came close to Dimebag's tone. Even though he used transistors... confused me into buying a different amp.-- bs0u0155, Jan 20 2015 random, halfbakery