🚀 go-pugleaf

helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) writes:

>Funny, I was exactly the same age when I got my first (and last) shock from
>a sign transformer. I was at a junior high carnival and I set up a
>Jacob's Ladder. It was nighttime and I was moving it around with the power
>on. (It seems everyone is sure they're immortal at that age!).

>I remember that when I made contact, I was living proof that it's only a
>myth that "White Men Can't Jump"! I must have gone three feet straight up.
>My arm, legs, back, everything hurt for a week afterwards - and it WAS 
>the worst shock I ever received. (It was right-arm-through-body-to-leg.) 

>I don't think I've gotten over 500 volts since that had 
>ANY current capacity - that was in the days of 450 vdc supplies driving
>tube equipment. I've had some CRT bites but nothing that could deliver
>serious current. I'm almost 54 and I can still remember that shock at
>age 13 like it was yesterday. It's one of the few memories from that age
>that I still have!

Yeah.  You and I both.  You'd have loved our electric chair I built when
I was a yound teenager.  The chair was simple.  A sraightback wooden
chair had an aluminum plate fastened to the seat and another fastened
to the back.  The plates were connected to a 15,000 volt neon
transformer.

After I got it built, the obvious question arose.  What to do with it?
A bit of teenage hormonal thinking resulted in it being turned into
a test of manhood.  The test was simple.  A variac was hooked in series
with the primary.  The contest was to see who could sit in the 
chair and see who could turn the knob up the highest.  As the inventor,
I was exempt from this, of course.  We were smart enough to have
a dead-man's switch (apropos, huh?) in the circuit.  If I only had
a video camera.  You'd be amazed at the things the human body
can withstand in the process of one acquiring one's manhood (or losing
it as the case may be :-)

Yep, amazing we made it to adulthood.  Makes me chuckle when I 
think about the risk-sterile society some would now force on us.

John
-- 
John De Armond, WD4OQC        | What's the difference between Jane Fonda
Rapid Deployment System, Inc. | and Bill Clinton?  Hanoi Jane went to 
Marietta, Ga                  | Viet Nam.              
jgd@dixie.com                 | Need public access in Atl?  Write me.