When engineers wore ties instead of baseball caps.
True story...
Two guys were running this machine, and then shut down the high voltage and take a break. They come back and notice the lead door into the HV area was open. So they close it, and restart the machine. The machine had lots of pumps, and made a lot of noise. There was a man in that HV room! So up comes the HV, 100kv, 200kv, 300kv...BAM! 100KV, 200KV, 300KV...BAM!
The guy inside was hiding in the corner, and around 300KV a lightning bolt found him. The man kept his composure, and after getting nailed, he grabbed the big bullet nose shorting out the HV with his body. The Power Supply was only capable of 1ma DC, so it current limited to 1ma through the mans body, arcing through his shoes to the floor. Finally the two guys operating the machine shut things down, and went into the lead room. Here comes the guy from inside, and fists were a flying!
Jim
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