Erm well are you suggesting bridging them with a charged up hv capacitor?
Not nice, and probably dangerous, at least the ladies only picked them up in
one hand then very quickly dropped them and swore.
Brian

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"jon" wrote in message ...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 08:04:22 +0100, Brian Gaff \(Sofa\) wrote:

Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your
heart, that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the
same
hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had series
fed heaters across the mains.
Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised
feeling
soon passes.

Remember in the past some dodgy practitioners thought shocks were
actually therapeutic, How they did not manage to kill most of their
patients is amazing. I'm also sure as kids we all made electric shock
machines All you needed was a small mains transformer a battery and
something like a mechanical buzzer. You wired the buzzer and secondary
in series with the battery and a switch, and asked your victim to hold
the ends of the primary.
I guess current was quite low, but when bridge rectifiers and small
high
voltage capacitors came along you could end up with something really
dangerous. What we used to do was charge up a capacitor and leave it on
a young ladies seat and watch what happened when she picked it up, Ahem,
Well it was fun at the time...
Brian

The radio room at Lyons where I did my apprenticeship had two door handles
that had to be operated simultaneously to gain entry.

Yes I know about those but they are very strictly current limited.
Brian

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Harry Bloomfield; "Esq." wrote in message
...
Brian Gaff (Sofa) laid this down on his screen :
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your heart,
that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.

Across the chest is the worst possible type of shock, almost as bad is
from the hand and down through the body to the wet feet.

They do still use a type of electric shock machine. They sometimes call
them 'TENS' commonly available with a type sold on TV ads. (Think
cricketer). Idea is the controlled electric shocks, trigger local muscles,
which also helps stimulate circulation and maybe use up fat in the body.

I don't hink you would be working on cars in bare feet though would you?
Brian

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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
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On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 09:47:36 +0100, Harry Bloomfield, Esq. wrote:

Brian Gaff (Sofa) laid this down on his screen :
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your
heart, that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.

Across the chest is the worst possible type of shock, almost as bad is
from the hand and down through the body to the wet feet.

Which is almost impossible to avoid in cars ... one hand on the chassis,
the other poking around near the HT leads ...

Another thing which strangely seem to help is the good old tesla coil,
often sold as the violet wand etc, though I'm not sure if all that ozone is
good for you, it does if stroked across ones skin seem to reduce pain, but
its all a bit over the top and showy, and probably could be done much easier
with a more targeted approach and les in your face pomp so to speak.
Brian

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"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 09:47:36 +0100, Harry Bloomfield, Esq. wrote:

They do still use a type of electric shock machine. They sometimes call
them 'TENS' commonly available with a type sold on TV ads. (Think
cricketer). Idea is the controlled electric shocks, trigger local
muscles,
which also helps stimulate circulation and maybe use up fat in the body.

TENS was really produced for blocking nerves with a high freqenecy signal.

However, mine is adjustable to very low frequencies, and I use mine at
fairly high intensity, at 2Hz, to cause a tight muscle to flex
repeatedly. I was put on it by a nurse at the pain clinic, and it's
pretty well fixed the problem after doctors gave up (following X-ray and
MRI...)


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wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

Yes they do, but its only at the discretion of the person as its by no means
pain free. Not that I've tried it, but know somebody who had it once..
Brian

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"Robin" wrote in message
...
Electrocution isn't always a dodgy therapy. The NHS still use
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for severe depression if there's no other
practicable option.


On 30/03/2021 08:04, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small
current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your heart, that
is
why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the
same
hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had series
fed
heaters across the mains.
Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised
feeling
soon passes.

Remember in the past some dodgy practitioners thought shocks were
actually
therapeutic, How they did not manage to kill most of their patients is
amazing. I'm also sure as kids we all made electric shock machines All
you
needed was a small mains transformer a battery and something like a
mechanical buzzer. You wired the buzzer and secondary in series with the
battery and a switch, and asked your victim to hold the ends of the
primary.
I guess current was quite low, but when bridge rectifiers and small
high
voltage capacitors came along you could end up with something really
dangerous. What we used to do was charge up a capacitor and leave it on a
young ladies seat and watch what happened when she picked it up, Ahem,
Well
it was fun at the time...
Brian



--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

Well, I'd become used to them by the age of 16, after all I had a father in
the tv business, and none of our tvs had a back.

Obviously, I was protected when I knew no better but following the rules
then I feel you do become immune to some extent over time.

Brian

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"NY" wrote in message
...
"Brian Gaff (Sofa)" wrote in message
...
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your heart,
that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the
same hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had
series fed heaters across the mains.

Ah, the perils of series-fed Christmas tree lights or valve heaters. When
all are working, you get the regulation 6 V across each one, but if one
fails and you remove it, there is near-enough the full mains voltage at
the socket (since the body resistance is so much greater than the filament
resistances).

Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised
feeling soon passes.

With my two mains shocks it took about 48 hours before the residual
tingling had gone.

I'm always wary of so called safety devices that rely on electronics. That
is why I used to pull out the breaker on that circuit completely. OK some
bodger might have routed a live from a different ring, but very unlikely.

Brian

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"Steve Walker" wrote in message
...
On 30/03/2021 13:00, NY wrote:
"Brian Gaff (Sofa)" wrote in message
...
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your
heart, that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the
same hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had
series fed heaters across the mains.

Ah, the perils of series-fed Christmas tree lights or valve heaters. When
all are working, you get the regulation 6 V across each one, but if one
fails and you remove it, there is near-enough the full mains voltage at
the socket (since the body resistance is so much greater than the
filament resistances).

There used to be a toy museum in Cockermouth. In one cabinet was an early,
electric, model railway. That had a controller that plugged into a light
fitting, with the removed bulb plugged into the top of the controller,
which had a rheostat. As soon as the train derailed, the tracks would have
no load and go to 240V!

Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised
feeling soon passes.

With my two mains shocks it took about 48 hours before the residual
tingling had gone.

I too got one off a tape recorder - my fault, I did not expect them to use
240V directly to power the erase head!

I've had a couple from accidentally contacting something that needed to
stay live, while working on something else in the same enclosure. Only the
tape recorder one was a proper belt, leaving me with a painful, but numb
and unresponsive arm, but only for a few minutes.

These days I've obviously improved, so none for quite a few years - except
for my boiler supply/switching, which floats at about 90V when I
disconnect both live and neutral at the supply end of the cable. There are
no other connections to either cable and boiler, so it must be an induced
voltage from parallel cabling.

Now we also have RCBOs on the non-lighting circuits and will be adding
them to the lighting soon.

Adam Funk wrote:
On 2021-03-30, Jethro_uk wrote:
When I was at Uni a lecturer mentioned checking out a neighbours cooker
that was "buzzy" when you touched it. He found there was no earth and
600V potential between it and the sink ...

OK, you've got my curiosity --- how do you get a 600 V difference
inside one house?

I can manage 415v. Next door is TNCS (earth connected to neutral) but has a
break in their neutral, so when they turn the cooker on the earth becomes
live with phase L1.

You and your neighbour share a water pipe. Through your neighbour's earth
bonding, the water pipe is now live with their phase L1. The water pipe
doesn't have good conduction to earth potential (during a drought, say).

You're on a different phase L2, and so a fault on your cooker exposes live
parts at L2. The sink is joined to the water pipe at potential of L1, and
so there's 415v between cooker and sink. You don't have (good) earth
bonding.

I could get to 586v if it was being rectified and smoothed. I doubt it was
though

Theo

I do hope the Spanish have improved their plugs and sockets as I got a belt
from a bedside light in the Canary Isles in a chalet. There were two errors.
The 2 pin connectors into the wall used a kind of poke in a hole and screw
the pin in over the wire connection system leaving strands of wire poking
out round the dodgy, and the not long enough cable from the light had been
twisted together to another cable to reach the plug and wrapped in
insulating tape. So I follow the wire down, first get a tingle from the
wire sticking through the tape and then get to the plug and get a belt from
the bits of bare wire round the not very well fitting pin of the plug.
I had quite a few words with the building manager and wondered if the
intention was to kill his residents off. He said guests were not supposed
to touch wiring, Well, like what kind of excuse is that.
I also remember a lift in an apartment building where we went to collect
some photos having a broken emergency cut switch which had been wedged on
with a bit of old plastic tubing and some duct tape, so goodness knows how
you were supposed to stop the lift if it went wrong!
Brian

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"Andy Bennet" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck, bad
judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling goes
away.

Been there done that - once!
When I was about 8 years old I had a crystal set and thought I needed a
longer aerial on it to get better reception. Had seen pylons with wires on
them supplying electricity so thought that would be a lovely aerial!. Went
to mains socket in bedroom with metal meccano screwdiver in one hand, bare
wire to plug into socket in other. Pushed down the earth shutter with
screwdriver and inserted bare wire into now open shuttered pin. I now know
the difference between live and neutral! Seriously thought I was going to
die. Been extreemly cautious ever since and never had another belt from
the mains!

You might have been very well hydrated so the current went through the
water!

Brian

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"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
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On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 09:02:44 +0100, Andy Bennet wrote:

On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

Been there done that - once!
When I was about 8 years old I had a crystal set and thought I needed a
longer aerial on it to get better reception. Had seen pylons with wires
on them supplying electricity so thought that would be a lovely aerial!.
Went to mains socket in bedroom with metal meccano screwdiver in one
hand, bare wire to plug into socket in other. Pushed down the earth
shutter with screwdriver and inserted bare wire into now open shuttered
pin. I now know the difference between live and neutral! Seriously
thought I was going to die. Been extreemly cautious ever since and never
had another belt from the mains!

I had a not dissimilar experience. I'd been given a mains radio, one
where the DC was obtained simply by directly rectifying the incoming
mains with no isolation, i.e. chassis connected to neutral etc.
Unbeknown to me, the previous owner had managed to reverse the live
and neutral wires in the plug, which meant the chassis was always
live. I was aware from crystal set experience that an 'earth' was a
'good thing', so I attached a wire to the chassis and dangled it out
of the bedroom window. Downstairs and outside, the plan was to attach
it to the rising water main. But I couldn't quite reach the dangling
wire without stretching up with one hand and holding onto said rising
main with the other hand for support. OUCH! I suppose I was lucky,
because that was the classic situation for electrocution, from one
hand to the other right across the heart. Being off-balance at the
time did mean immediate disconnection as I dropped down, which
probably saved me.

--

Chris

In article , Brian Gaff \(Sofa\)
wrote:
I'm always wary of so called safety devices that rely on electronics.
That is why I used to pull out the breaker on that circuit completely.
OK some bodger might have routed a live from a different ring, but very
unlikely.

Brian

we had a teacher at school whose hair was completely white. He'd been
working on a circuit from which he'd removed the fuse. Someone passing saw
the fuse on the side and re-inserted it.
Moral - put the fuse in your pocket.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

There was one odd occasion during the assembly of the space station where
one astronaught felt what he described as an electric shock while inserting
a bolt with a powered driver, They never did find out the reason, as those
gloves are multi layer and covered in a kind of silicon stuff on the outside
to aid grip. I suspect static, but I never did hear of any resolution.
Electricity can be very odd stuff, I mean they still do not really know what
makes lightning suddenly break down the air insulation to ionise it and
discharge. The current idea is the millions of cosmic rays we all are
bombarded by every day from deep space events. Then there are the sprites
and ball lightning to work out. The latter I have witnessed and am really no
wiser at all.
Brian

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"Clive Arthur" wrote in message
...
On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck, bad
judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling goes
away.

I looked into this a few years ago when I drew the short straw and had to
conduct some staff training about electrical safety.

Very approximately, 30 people per year die in the UK from electric shock.
Nearly all of those are from digging up cables or contacting overhead
cables. In other words, very few from the domestic mains.

Figures for the number of indirect deaths - eg falling off the ladder due
to a shock - were not available, or at least not easily, and I didn't care
that much anyway. The small, innovative company had just been bought by
GE and I wasn't hanging about to be tapped in a world of online training
courses and wearing Kevlar gloves to use a scalpel.

--
Cheers
Clive

Yes I mentioned the first one earlier and there have been deaths on stage
due to faulty gear and mis wired electronics.

Brian

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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
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On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:32:04 +0100, soup wrote:

Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

Well didn't an MPs daughter die of a 240V shock in a domestic incident ?

And Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an electrocution
at his home (so presumably 240V).

When I was at Uni a lecturer mentioned checking out a neighbours cooker
that was "buzzy" when you touched it. He found there was no earth and
600V potential between it and the sink ...

You probably have several phases of the mains in a block of flats, or some
idiot has done something strange in the earthing or both.


I noticed that in my kitchen in the 70s there was 80 volts between the earth
of the washing machine and the sink, but you could not feel anything other
than a tingle. The water it turned out was being supplied via flexible hoses
to the sink and the waste was all plastic. One bit of wire back to the
copper and no more problems. The question was what were we measuring?
Brian

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"Adam Funk" wrote in message
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On 2021-03-30, Jethro_uk wrote:

On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:32:04 +0100, soup wrote:

Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

Well didn't an MPs daughter die of a 240V shock in a domestic incident ?

And Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an electrocution
at his home (so presumably 240V).

When I was at Uni a lecturer mentioned checking out a neighbours cooker
that was "buzzy" when you touched it. He found there was no earth and
600V potential between it and the sink ...

OK, you've got my curiosity --- how do you get a 600 V difference
inside one house?

Yes, there have even been live wires found buried in walls from a previous
occupants messing about, and also in one particular case a live bit of metal
which was not isolated even turning off the main switch, turned out to have
come from next door!


The people who made Meccano imported a clone of Scalextric from Franc many
years ago, It ran the cars on Ac, and a variable resistor in series with the
low voltage side of a mains transformer. They had to recall a lot of them as
they could overheat and go short to mains. Not very good, I wondered if it
had something to do with the average mains in France been 20 v less than
ours, but if so its a very poor margin of safety.
Brian

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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
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On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 10:06:28 +0100, Adam Funk wrote:

On 2021-03-30, Jethro_uk wrote:

On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:32:04 +0100, soup wrote:

Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually
happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

Well didn't an MPs daughter die of a 240V shock in a domestic incident
?

And Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an electrocution
at his home (so presumably 240V).

When I was at Uni a lecturer mentioned checking out a neighbours cooker
that was "buzzy" when you touched it. He found there was no earth and
600V potential between it and the sink ...

OK, you've got my curiosity --- how do you get a 600 V difference inside
one house?

I have no idea exactly. We were discussing "earths" and the fact that
your earth and my earth may not be the same. Isn't that why there's earth
bonding everywhere ?

It was thanks to this lecturer that I always factor a sudden loss of
power and services into a building that can last a day into my BCP/DR
planning. "Murphy and his jackhammer" were a recurring theme ...

We don't have them in thishouse either but I do have a plug in one I use if
I'm using gear outside.
Brian

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"NY" wrote in message
...
"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:04:37 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

Jethro_uk wrote:

Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an electrocution at
his home

Dodgy guitar/amp wiring is traditional, isn't it?

https://www.ranker.com/list/musician...stage/jessica-
defino

though I don't think jessica knows what electrocuted means

The English language really does need another word to mean "received a
serious *but non-fatal* electric shock". Maybe we should avoid being King
Canutes, and accept that people will use "electrocuted" for the non-fatal
meaning, and devise a new wording such as "electrocuted to death".

When I was rehearsing and playing live I made damn sure I had an RCD trip
on my amplifier. Back in the mid 80s no one knew why.

I don't remember RCD devices (plug and socket) being around in the 1980s.
I can remember mains spike filters, but not RCD. That shows how little
prominence they had 40 years ago.

When did the fitting of RCDs on new house installations become part of
building regs? My first house, built in 1985, didn't have one - and
surprisingly it had wire fuses rather than MCB current-operated trip
switches. So evidently mandatory RCDs was after that. My second house,
built in 2000, had RCD and MCBs. As usual, only one RCD for the whole
house, rather than one per ring main, so a faulty appliance (or a finger
on a live terminal) took out the whole house, not just one ring.

I have circuit breakers and the rewiring was done in the 70s, there are now
no more surprises as we found when we all moved in, like live feeds to non
existent wall lights in two core cable plastered over for example.
Brian

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"Owain Lastname" wrote in message
...
On Tuesday, 30 March 2021 at 13:23:25 UTC+1, NY wrote:
I don't remember RCD devices (plug and socket) being around in the 1980s.
I
can remember mains spike filters, but not RCD. That shows how little
prominence they had 40 years ago.

I remember having an RCD plug on my electric blanket in 1989 or so.

It was quite a lot later I saw a consumer unit with even a mainswitch RCD.
MK Sentry was launched in the 1980s but if anyone was getting rewired at
that point I think they still went for Wylex fuses.

Owain

It is very weird though to get electrocuted in that way, unless the guy had
a dodgy heart or a pacemaker. Brian

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"charles" wrote in message
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In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Jethro_uk wrote:

Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an electrocution
at his home

Dodgy guitar/amp wiring is traditional, isn't it?

I know a musician was killed at Surrey University some years ago when he
grabbed hold of a microphone stand. That's why all stage sockets in
Guildford now need RCds.

https://www.ranker.com/list/musicians-electrocuted-on-stage/jessica-defino

though I don't think jessica knows what electrocuted means

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

Or the law of deminishing returns, as you lower the risk you have to get
more ingenious to stop the rest. / Some may say some people just do not
deserve to live considering how many stupid things they do, but on the other
hand loss of life has to be avoided.
Brian

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"Robin" wrote in message
...
On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck, bad
judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling goes
away.

I doubt anyone has statistics on the latter - and I'd doubt their
reliability if they require people to own up to the whimpering bit

But deaths are few. Used to run at about 15 a year in England where the
/underlying/ cause of death was electric current. And bulk of those were
not in the home (and so include ones where more than 240v involved).

There are of course serious injuries on top of the deaths. But changes to
BS 7671 seem to be made without assessments of costs and benefits. Too
much flavour of "no price is too high..." for my liking.

--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

Yes, gently pushing an edge connector on a pcb that was intermittence. The
edge connector was single sided as was the pcb, but some dick head had
replaced the standard edge connector with one with bare contacts all the
way around. The ht welded my hand to it until I used the other to pull it
off, my fingers were quite for for a day or so. I'm not used to becoming a
resistor in a DC circuit.
The moral of course is, never assume always check what you think is the
case actually is.
Brian

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"R D S" wrote in message
...
On 30/03/2021 09:35, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I've had many shocks, it usually doesn't much bother me, except for once
when I genuiningly was thrown across a room, a flooded banking hall.

I've had more than I care to admit. I'm more careful generally as I age so
incidents are tailing off.

The worse was when I had something in my hand (a water solenoid), some
dickhead (most likely me) had connected live to earth so I powered it to
test it was working and couldn't let go. Very unpleasant that one.

Yes well I obviously did not have your skin when I was in my first job then.
Brian

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Harry Bloomfield; "Esq." wrote in message
...
It happens that Peter Able formulated :
Or your skin impedance is rising... ;-)

Even as a youngster, I was able to put my finger in a live BC lamp socket,
without too much bother, providing the rest of my body was insulated.

Are the old argument on here of whether a neon screwdriver is a blessing or
a curse then...
Brian

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"Max Demian" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 30/03/2021 10:38, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 10:16:43 +0100, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually
happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

As a very young child I got a nasty jolt from putting my fingers in a
lamp bayonet socket. I didn't do that again! But the worst shock was
when, as a young teenager into hobby electronics, I was making a small
valve-based transmitter. I was holding the HV DC +ve lead (about 350V)
and went to move the large smoothing electrolytic the -ve was soldered
to. I didn't know that the -ve and metal case were often connected. My
hand clamped around the electro so that I could not release it, but very
fortunately my biceps muscle also contracted and I involuntarily threw
the electro across the room, thus breaking the connection. It was one
hell of a shock, and I was very lucky the connection had been broken.

ISTR being told that you should test an exposed wire (????) with the back
of your hand so that any muscle reaction will not cause you to grab hold
of it.

I'd rather test it with a neon screwdriver.

--
Max Demian

did not have those back then unfortunately.
Brian

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Harry Bloomfield; "Esq." wrote in message
...
Max Demian pretended :
I'd rather test it with a neon screwdriver.

Frowned upon, but I would use a volt-stick, after proving it was working.

On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Â*Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

Just remember the doggerel:

It's the volts that jolts, but the mills that kills.

PA

I've always found dc shocks worse than ac ones which do often send you off,
I guess it very much depends on which muscles and in what mode they operate.
Brian

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"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
On 29/03/2021 23:32, soup wrote:
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck, bad
judgment or plain stupidity .

One of my friends at university was unlucky enough to grab onto a Jesus
lead in the lab with a plug at each end. He was holding a live plug. Third
degree burns in the time it took someone to knock off the mains.

A previous (and terminally stupid) research student had made it - too lazy
to open up the four way strip and wire it up properly.

I have lost count of the number of hedge trimmer and lawn mower Jesus
leads I have reconfigured after noticing neighbours with it the wrong way
around. Usually just after they have cut through the cable again.

Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling goes
away.

The funniest one for me was a US service engineer training on our kit in
the UK. They have a tendency to lick fingers and touch live to see if its
hot which on US 100v mains you can get away with. UK mains threw him hard
against a wall and he turned ashen grey. First aid was administering warm
sweet tea and a stern warning never to do that again.

When you do fire training in smoke you are taught to walk with your arms
in front, elbows out and palms facing inwards to your chest. That way if
you do touch a live wire muscle reflex pulls your hand away from it.

The tendency is for anyone untrained to flail their hands about in the
smoke feeling for things palms open and outwards. Do that and touch live
and the contracting muscles will grab onto it for you. Not good!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Hmm, the problem with tongue testing batteries is that it proves nothing
since very low current is drawn to get that taste of pickles.
Brian

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"Peter Johnson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:32:04 +0100, soup wrote:

Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

About 50 years ago a work colleague was trying to connect an early
consumer tape recorder to a telephone handset plugge into an old
fashioned GPO telephone switchboard to see if he could record
conversations. When I moved a switch on the board I unwittingly put
40v into his tongue, which he was using to hold the connecting wires
in place. He gave up with his experiment.

Ah yes the storage abilities of a coil. Very interesting stuff that.
Was not how a magneto worked?
Brian

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"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/03/2021 15:05, Peter Johnson wrote:
On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:32:04 +0100, soup wrote:

Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck,
bad judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling
goes away.

About 50 years ago a work colleague was trying to connect an early
consumer tape recorder to a telephone handset plugge into an old
fashioned GPO telephone switchboard to see if he could record
conversations. When I moved a switch on the board I unwittingly put
40v into his tongue, which he was using to hold the connecting wires
in place. He gave up with his experiment.

I got my first serious shock - we had an electric heater that always
'tingled' - from a 12v train transformer used to drive a train set. I was
using it to drive an overhead live rail train I had made out of Meccano
with the super big Meccano electric motor in it.
It wouldn't go - it sat there buzzing so I calculated the overhead rail
needed to be lifted a bit ...so I grabbed the train and lifted the
overhead rail with my other hand..and broke the circuit between motor and
transformer...

YEOWCH!! I hadn't even begun to study electricity and had no idea such a
thing as inductance existed. I thought 12V was 'safe'

I was only about 8 or 9 I think



--
Truth welcomes investigation because truth knows investigation will lead
to converts. It is deception that uses all the other techniques.

Robin wrote

Electrocution isn't always a dodgy therapy. The NHS still use
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for severe depression if there's no other
practicable option.

And some of the yanks still use the electric chair
as a very effective therapy for the worst murderers.

They never do another.


Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small
current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your heart, that
is
why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the
same
hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had series
fed
heaters across the mains.
Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised
feeling
soon passes.

Remember in the past some dodgy practitioners thought shocks were
actually
therapeutic, How they did not manage to kill most of their patients is
amazing. I'm also sure as kids we all made electric shock machines All
you
needed was a small mains transformer a battery and something like a
mechanical buzzer. You wired the buzzer and secondary in series with the
battery and a switch, and asked your victim to hold the ends of the
primary.
I guess current was quite low, but when bridge rectifiers and small
high
voltage capacitors came along you could end up with something really
dangerous. What we used to do was charge up a capacitor and leave it on a
young ladies seat and watch what happened when she picked it up, Ahem,
Well
it was fun at the time...
Brian



--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 30 Mar 2021, NY wrote

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:04:37 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

Jethro_uk wrote:

Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an
electrocution at his home

Dodgy guitar/amp wiring is traditional, isn't it?

https://www.ranker.com/list/musician...-on-stage/jess
ica-
defino

though I don't think jessica knows what electrocuted means

The English language really does need another word to mean
"received a serious *but non-fatal* electric shock". Maybe we
should avoid being King Canutes, and accept that people will use
"electrocuted" for the non-fatal meaning, and devise a new wording
such as "electrocuted to death".

"Electrocuted to death" is in fairly common use -- but it hasnn't
solved the problem, as "electrocution" continues to be used for both
fatal and non-fatal shocks.

It annoys the hell out of my inner pedant, and I'm tempted to go for
a multiple redundancy: something like "The electrocution fatally
killed him to death, and he didn't survive".


--
Cheers, Harvey

"Brian Gaff (Sofa)" wrote in message
...
The older TVs of course had the chassis at half mains voltage and the
aerial socket was supposed to contain isolating capacitors, but even those
can get charged up to high voltages and also you can get leaky capacitors
after some time and this practice luckily has now almost stopped, in
favour of the switch mode psu which is then supposedly isolated by its
much smaller transformer working at the higher frequencies.

This was a Panasonic CRT TV, bought in 2000. It was widescreen, so probably
a fairly recent model as digital TV was only just about to be introduced.


I suppose the presence of live chassis in very old televisions was the
reason for the insulated aerial plugs that you used to see on TV aerial
leads. ;-)

"NY" wrote in message
...
"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:04:37 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

Jethro_uk wrote:

Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an electrocution at
his home

Dodgy guitar/amp wiring is traditional, isn't it?

https://www.ranker.com/list/musician...stage/jessica-
defino

though I don't think jessica knows what electrocuted means

The English language really does need another word to mean "received a
serious *but non-fatal* electric shock". Maybe we should avoid being King
Canutes, and accept that people will use "electrocuted" for the non-fatal
meaning, and devise a new wording such as "electrocuted to death".

When I was rehearsing and playing live I made damn sure I had an RCD trip
on my amplifier. Back in the mid 80s no one knew why.

I don't remember RCD devices (plug and socket) being around in the 1980s.

Yes they were, I had one in the very early 70s when building the house.

I can remember mains spike filters, but not RCD. That shows how little
prominence they had 40 years ago.

When did the fitting of RCDs on new house installations become part of
building regs? My first house, built in 1985, didn't have one - and
surprisingly it had wire fuses rather than MCB current-operated trip
switches. So evidently mandatory RCDs was after that. My second house,
built in 2000, had RCD and MCBs. As usual, only one RCD for the whole
house, rather than one per ring main, so a faulty appliance (or a finger
on a live terminal) took out the whole house, not just one ring.

My mum was doing the washing in the 60's using a hotpoint
twin tub and she dropped the plug into the water, then
fished it out and plugged it in with the same wet soapy
hand used to fish it out of the washer, and flew across
the kitchen.

Andrew


On 30/03/2021 17:00, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
You probably have several phases of the mains in a block of flats, or some
idiot has done something strange in the earthing or both.


I noticed that in my kitchen in the 70s there was 80 volts between the earth
of the washing machine and the sink, but you could not feel anything other
than a tingle. The water it turned out was being supplied via flexible hoses
to the sink and the waste was all plastic. One bit of wire back to the
copper and no more problems. The question was what were we measuring?
Brian

On Wed, 31 Mar 2021 04:11:53 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

--
"Who or What is Rod Speed?

Rod Speed is an entirely modern phenomenon. Essentially, Rod Speed
is an insecure and worthless individual who has discovered he can
enhance his own self-esteem in his own eyes by playing "the big, hard
man" on the InterNet."
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/r...d-faq.2973853/

"Who or What is Rod Speed?

Rod Speed is an entirely modern phenomenon. Essentially, Rod Speed
is an insecure and worthless individual who has discovered he can
enhance his own self-esteem in his own eyes by playing "the big, hard
man" on the InterNet."
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/r...d-faq.2973853/

--
Kerr-Mudd,John addressing the auto-contradicting senile cretin:
"Auto-contradictor Rod is back! (in the KF)"
MID:

On 30/03/2021 19:09, NY wrote:
I suppose the presence of live chassis in very old televisions was the
reason for the insulated aerial plugs that you used to see on TV aerial
leads.

The very large cream coloured ones used by DER and Radio Rentals, yes.

Bill

Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote

Erm well are you suggesting bridging them with a charged up hv capacitor?
Not nice, and probably dangerous, at least the ladies only picked them up
in one hand then very quickly dropped them and swore.

Real ladies never swear. If they do they get de tiared, rather like being
defrocked.

"jon" wrote in message ...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 08:04:22 +0100, Brian Gaff \(Sofa\) wrote:

Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your
heart, that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the
same
hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had series
fed heaters across the mains.
Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised
feeling
soon passes.

Remember in the past some dodgy practitioners thought shocks were
actually therapeutic, How they did not manage to kill most of their
patients is amazing. I'm also sure as kids we all made electric shock
machines All you needed was a small mains transformer a battery and
something like a mechanical buzzer. You wired the buzzer and secondary
in series with the battery and a switch, and asked your victim to hold
the ends of the primary.
I guess current was quite low, but when bridge rectifiers and small
high
voltage capacitors came along you could end up with something really
dangerous. What we used to do was charge up a capacitor and leave it on
a young ladies seat and watch what happened when she picked it up, Ahem,
Well it was fun at the time...
Brian

The radio room at Lyons where I did my apprenticeship had two door
handles
that had to be operated simultaneously to gain entry.

Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote

I don't hink you would be working on cars in bare feet though would you?

Lots of us do in summer.

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 09:47:36 +0100, Harry Bloomfield, Esq. wrote:

Brian Gaff (Sofa) laid this down on his screen :
Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly
small current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your
heart, that is why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.

Across the chest is the worst possible type of shock, almost as bad is
from the hand and down through the body to the wet feet.

Which is almost impossible to avoid in cars ... one hand on the chassis,
the other poking around near the HT leads ...

On Wed, 31 Mar 2021 06:01:39 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

--
Marland revealing the senile sociopath's pathology:
"You have mentioned Alexa in a couple of threads recently, it is not a real
woman you know even if it is the only thing with a female name that stays
around around while you talk it to it.
Poor sad git who has to resort to Usenet and electronic devices for any
interaction as all real people run a mile to get away from you boring them
to death."
MID:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2021 06:03:39 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

06:03 already? Do you know no shame AT ALL, you disgusting senile troll?

--
Marland answering senile Rodent's statement, "I don't leak":
"That¢s because so much **** and ****e emanates from your gob that there is
nothing left to exit normally, your arsehole has clammed shut through disuse
and the end of prick is only clear because you are such a ******."
Message-ID:

On 30/03/2021 18:24, HVS wrote:
On 30 Mar 2021, NY wrote

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:04:37 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

Jethro_uk wrote:

Keith Relf formerly of the Yardbirds was killed in an
electrocution at his home

Dodgy guitar/amp wiring is traditional, isn't it?

https://www.ranker.com/list/musician...-on-stage/jess
ica-
defino

though I don't think jessica knows what electrocuted means

The English language really does need another word to mean
"received a serious *but non-fatal* electric shock". Maybe we
should avoid being King Canutes, and accept that people will use
"electrocuted" for the non-fatal meaning, and devise a new wording
such as "electrocuted to death".

"Electrocuted to death" is in fairly common use -- but it hasnn't
solved the problem, as "electrocution" continues to be used for both
fatal and non-fatal shocks.

It annoys the hell out of my inner pedant, and I'm tempted to go for
a multiple redundancy: something like "The electrocution fatally
killed him to death, and he didn't survive".


Electrocution comes IIRC from 'electric execution' - the way in which
capital punishment in the USA was carried out by means of electricity.
It didn't originally even mean accidental death by electric shock.

"The term "electrocution" was coined in 1889 in the US just before the
first use of the electric chair and originally referred only to
electrical execution and not to accidental or suicidal electrical
deaths. However, since no English word was available for non-judicial
deaths due to electric shock, the word "electrocution" eventually took
over as a description of all circumstances of electrical death from the
new commercial electricity."



--
€œPuritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.€�

H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy