by Stephen » Mon May 07, 2007 12:59 am
My start with electrical equipment as a child of three whilst prodding toy train wires into the mains outlet gave me an early boost of resistance to high tension. I built up my resistance still further when about the age of nine I started building radio equipment and fooling around with old tellies as a hobby. This was in the late 50s when everything was valve-driven.
Through a combination of childhood cluminess and stupidity, I managed to tease my nervous system up to about 20 kVAC on a regular basis building or tinkering with electronics. Admittedly, the 20 kVAC stuff was just harmless high frequency CRT anode potential, but I would often get my fingers on 1000 VDC overdriving experimental transmitting equipment. This brings back fond memories of white-hot anodes, sparking control grids and tank circuits catching on fire. It is remarkable that I survived my childhood.
Nevertheless, I got to the point that I could tell electrical potential by touch pretty well. A number of years ago my brother zapped me with a "Taser" device just for fun. To his disappointment, it had no effect.
Stephen