Who hasn't accidentally touched a mains voltage once or twice?

You know, the point to this thread was to determine if anyone had NEVER touched a mains voltage. No takers so far. I wonder if they exist. We hear that mains voltage is so incredibly dangerous, yet everyone has touched it at least once or twice. Even in my talking to non electrical nerds this is the case even among the general population. So why aren't more people fried? I think the danger is overblown unless you are soaked in salt water. But, my middle name is still Danger.

JoeN:
But, my middle name is still Danger.

So, sue your parents.

Boardburner2:
TWT psus were my pet hate.

OT: Mine too, briefly.
Or rather, the tubes themselves.

Being thermionic, they were very sensitive to thermal shock, and microwave stations had no climate control.
I was tasked with trying to find relationships between TWT failures, events and environment, and stations were usually
a) unmanned
b) remote
c) had only station logs to record faults.

I drove up a lot of mountains that summer!

Hi, I have been zapped quite few times during my working life, (still am, working that is).
Listens , ker thump, ker thump, ker thump, yep still here.

240Vac used to be a decent jolt, do many of us more mature zapped forum members recon that a clout from their mains is not as memorable as it used to be.

15kV used to wake you up too.

Tom...... :slight_smile:
ps, all touches with the mains are accidental.

TomGeorge:
Tom...... :slight_smile:
ps, all touches with the mains are accidental.

Electric Chair...
Suicide (sticking metal objects into plug sockets)

And mental people climbing power poles.

Hi.

Quote from: TomGeorge on 17-09-2014, 22:58:04

ps, all touches with the mains are accidental.

Sorry, in MY CASE, all touches with the mains are accidental.

I use coffee to wake me up in the morning,
With the number of coffee vans and shops in this city, the whole city population should be Lerts.
And ya got to be a Lert these days, especially around electricity.

Tom...... :slight_smile:
Sorry its morning here and only 1/2 a cup of java consumed.

JoeN:
You know, the point to this thread was to determine if anyone had NEVER touched a mains voltage. No takers so far. I wonder if they exist. We hear that mains voltage is so incredibly dangerous, yet everyone has touched it at least once or twice. Even in my talking to non electrical nerds this is the case even among the general population. So why aren't more people fried? I think the danger is overblown unless you are soaked in salt water. But, my middle name is still Danger.

I have a few grandkids that have never touched a mains, but they do not play with Arduinos yet either.

cjdelphi:

TomGeorge:
Tom...... :slight_smile:
ps, all touches with the mains are accidental.

Electric Chair...
Suicide (sticking metal objects into plug sockets)

And mental people climbing power poles.

My first time was when I was 5 sticking a pin into an out let.

As for on purpose touching, I had a Navy Electrician that would test ship wiring by two finger method. Never carried a meter.

Worse than mains, in 1959 I worked for a company that made hv supplys for backward wave oscillators and traveling wave tube amplifiers.I was working on a 5kv 2a power supply with the supply supposedly interlocked off. The interlock didn't work and several times I leaned forward and got a tingle. The third time I knew something was wrong, the high voltage was on. I was just getting a tingle through my corduroy pants, thank god for thick pants! Jim

alfiesty:
.I was working on a 5kv 2a power supply with the supply supposedly interlocked off.

Yep them things scared the pants off me.
Never zapped though.

Never had a mains belt either.

Lots of painful memories of ringer volts in frame rooms though.

. . . or +/- 80V telex circuits.

Ha! Yeah, I added an extension to our home line once. We got an incoming call while I was wrapping the wires around the set screw in a wall biscuit. It's a bit less obvious than mains... took a second to notice I was feeling something, then realized my fingers were starting to hurt! I heard later from the calling party that the line was doing "strange things". (Yeah, like electrocuting the recipient!)

SirNickity:
Ha! Yeah, I added an extension to our home line once. We got an incoming call while I was wrapping the wires around the set screw in a wall biscuit. It's a bit less obvious than mains... took a second to notice I was feeling something, then realized my fingers were starting to hurt! I heard later from the calling party that the line was doing "strange things". (Yeah, like electrocuting the recipient!)

You got the message... :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

SirNickity:
(Yeah, like electrocuting the recipient!)

Recipient being you or them? If them, they were not seeing that voltage, the telco's equipment was seeing it. I actually wonder how the telco protects their equipment from that sort of thing (and lightening too). Zeners, maybe...

I actually wonder how the telco protects their equipment from that sort of thing (and lightening too)

Used to be gas discharge tubes.
The main frame in an exchange during a thunderstorm used to be a sight to behold :slight_smile:
(Don't know about now - I left BT thirty years ago)

JoeN:
Little kids are overly enthusiastic about putting keys into small holes (that was the worst one). Shit happens. Any of you somehow completely avoided doing this?

I've been ground-keeper on a school for kids aged 4-12 and after I found a big nail in one of the outlets, I tried, but the teachers started complaining that it was so hard to plug in the connector, turn it a little bit and push it further.
I slept a lot better after someone, don't ask who :roll_eyes:, used some superglue to make the safety unremoveable.

And yes, I've been zapped a few times as well.

JoeN:
Recipient being you or them? If them, they were not seeing that voltage, the telco's equipment was seeing it. I actually wonder how the telco protects their equipment from that sort of thing (and lightening too). Zeners, maybe...

Recipient being this guy. This was mid-90s, but I suspect even then the calling party and I were separated by a digital trunk.

Not a whole lot has changed in line interfaces, AWOL. I'm not on "that" side of the house, but a lot of the equipment still hails from the mid to late century. We have racks of giant brown switching boxes here. One night during after-hours maintenance, I wandered around to see what there was to see. Came across a NOISY cabinet. On closer inspection, I found it was a hard disk drive about two feet wide and four feet long! I had seen one removed and sitting off to the side before, and just assumed it had been there since its glory days and never trashed. I was shocked to find that one was still in operation! (Now whether it is doing anything is another matter. Wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that it was still running because no one bothered to power it down after an upgrade in 1987.)

My grandfather was a telephone linesman until the mid-60s, and as a kid, I used to play with old relays, selectors and switches from exchanges.
Nearly twenty years later, I was amazed to see the same stuff still in use (although very much on the way out), and line meters still being "read" by being photographed en masse.

Once we were with an ex girlfriend lying in bed, and I asked her if she felt a weird tickling (no, not that one), she said yes. I inspected the bed and she had a bedpan on the bed below us. I quickly unplugged it and then we realized the power strip was damaged, because we didn't feel the tickling when plugged straight to the wall. The tickling was the current going trough us to the bed and to the floor returning ground.
Luckly the bed wasn't a water one :sweat_smile: