🚀 go-pugleaf

Back when I was 5 or 6, I noticed our kitchen oven was "fuzzy".
We had 5 miles of electric fence on our farm (2000V @ 25 MA,
1 sec on, 1 sec off).  There were electric fence testers around, which
just amounted to an NE-2 neon bulb (no limiting resistor) and one
long ground wire tied to a "nail" which you grounded while touching
the other end to the fence. The brightness gave an indication of 
the condition of the fence.

My mom did not notice this fuzzy effect, so I had to "convince her".
Suspecting the fuzzy feeling might be electricity leakage (I had 
run into similar feelings on the electric fence when I was very
poorly grounded), I took the fence tester, touched one end to the
sink (good ground), and the other end to the oven to see if it
would glow.

Well, it did, very bright purple-white for about 1 second, then
it exploded (no limiting resistor) into a fireball in my hand.
(I was not hurt) mom started screaming, etc. She also didn't like
the holes which were burned into both the sink and the oven
(about 1/4"-1/2" I remember).  I told her "that could have been
you.. if you happened to touch both the sink and oven at the same time".
She quit complaining after that.  This was a new (just built) house
in the late '50s.  So much for wiring codes/inspections back then.
REMC gave us  "gold medalion" for this house as it was one
of the first "all electric" homes in the county, had a separate
electic meter for the heat for some cost study.  Also the oven
was on a 30A or 40A circuit breaker.  Back in the 50's those breakers
seemed to take forever to blow, hence the fireball.
--ghg

Geo. Goble, Engineering Computer Network, Purdue U. W. Lafayette, IN 47907