Electrical receptacle safety covering

DETAILED DESCRIPTION A primary object of the present invention is to protect persons too young to appreciate the hazards of electricity from access to the outlets of electrical receptacles, by covering the outlets so as to require skills of an older child or adult to uncover them.
Another object of this invention is to provide a spring-biased protective cover arrangement in which action separate from closing the cover is required to latch it and, hence, unlatching it can not be accomplished by pulling on the cover in its opening direction.
A further object of the invention is to enable an electrical receptacle to be used while closed from view by a protective cover.
In general, the objects of this invention are accomplished by separating the protective function of safety covering of electrical receptacles into discrete cooperating latching and spring-biasing safety or security functions.
More particularly, the invention is conveniently embodied, for an electrical receptacle, in a combination of plate means (more or less flush with the receptacle) and of covering means for the front thereof, wherein one such means carries along an edge thereof both a spring member and a slide member adapted to move relative thereto between a latched position free of spring bias and an unlatched position subject to spring bias.
In a preferred embodiment, the covering means carries a pair of such slide and spring members.
Other objects of the present invention, together with means and methods for accomplishing the various objects, will be apparent from the following description and the accompanying diagrams of one or more embodiments of the invention, being presented by way of example rather than limitation.