In article ,
Jeff Wisnia wrote:


Yes, and after I finished posting I remembered that some CRTs are damn
good Leyden jars too!

I nearly lost my after school job as a TV repair guy in the 50s 'cause I
dropped a good sized B&W CRT which zapped me when I picked it up to take
it to the truck. (Glass all over the place....)

I'd forgotten to discharge it after I disconnected the anode lead before
taking it out of a customer's TV console cabinet. G

IIRC sometimes that charge in the CRTs would "come back" enough to bite
you even though you'd shorted it out once. (Dielectric absorption?)

Dunno about dielectric absorption - I'd put it down to "less than
complete discharge".

My pappy learned about how CRT's can sneak up on you - The hard way! He,
the electrically-illiterate member of the family, was ripping the guts
out of an early 1970's vintage 25 inch console TV so he could salvage
some of the rather pretty wood that made up the top and sides for a
project he was working on. This TV hadn't been plugged in, let alone
turned on (it didn't even have a power cord attached to it - that had
been gone for as long as the thing had been sitting in the garage) in at
least 5 years that we knew of for sure, and perhaps longer. When he
yanked the anode lead so he could pull the main chassis out of the box,
things got impressive, quick. Ever see a 6'2", 270+ pound man fly
without wings? I did... And he wasn't happy when he hit the wall and
sorta slid down it like something out of a Warner Brothers cartoon. The
"lightning bolt" that I saw jump from the anode connection on the tube
to his wrist looked like it was as thick as my thumb, and made a
"CRACK!" that could've easily been mistaken for a .22 rifle being fired.
He ended up with a small burn on his wrist where it had bit him, and one
helluva headache from smacking his gourd against the wall when he landed.

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