RE: The effects of high voltage on the body..

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Matt Woody Meyer by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <meyerml-at-stolaf.edu>

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"I took a light shock from a couple of video games once. I was
manager of an arcade, and while I was unlocking them to count
quarters I had a key in each game and felt a shock. I found that
both had broken-off grounds on the plug and because of the
differences in the power supplies they were both floating at about
25 to 30Vac but at opposite phases. So only between the two was
there enough to shock me.

I replaced both AC cords then went around and found about a dozen
more with missing or near to breaking ground prongs and replaced
them. I got rather mad when my bosses took me to task for
spending the money, when no customers had complained and said I
just shouldn't touch both games at once."
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Reminds me of when I used to play bass in a very lousy high school band (we
REALLY were terrible!).  None of the amps (speaker cabinets) had ground
connections; all was borrowed equipment from my school.  It must have been
darn funny to see us jump in surprise any time we touched each other's
guitar strings.  Even funnier was when our singer stepped up to the mic and
got a pretty big jolt through his lips.

All of the amps were by different manufacturers (Ampeg, Fender, Pevey) and
each had a unique polarization system (I believe Pevey's had 1, 2, Fender
was A, B, Ampeg was unlabeled).  The only way to get everything polarized
together was through trial and error.  Unfortunately, this task fell to me,
so I got to spend an hour every time we played getting things set up
right... probably wasn't more than a microamp or so, but it still hurts!

I found it very strange how big a jolt one could get from touching another
player's strings!

My story,
><>Woody