Also did air gun, but used soldering iron bits as "bullets" in a 1 m 
long blowpipe with 8 bar airline. We targeted a pine panel at ~15 m. 
They penetrated about 15 mm with a very impressive thump. Would have 
been lethal against a person.

Also inversed the connections on the large smoothing elco of a 
colleague's breadboard. Boom!

Funniest one was that we rigged a large centrifugal anode cooling 
ventilator for 5 kW transmitter valves under the lab stool of the first 
lady engineer I ever worked with (a rare bird in 1954). Of course, in 
those days, the gentler sex didn't wear anything but skirts or dresses 
and fashion had them flared. We waited until she was concentrating on 
her work when we switched it on. The effect was exhilarating, 
accompanied by a loud scream. She was a nice girl, actually, and a damn 
good engineer.

At college, the lab stools were wooden three-sided box-like affairs with 
a slot in the seat to act as a handle. One of them was modified with a 
spring-loaded plunger that came up through the slot when the seat was 
depressed with a load of about 40 kg or more, purely mechanical.

We also had a fuse tester in an impressive professional-looking metal 
case and multiple clips for all sizes of cartridge fuses. Every new 
engineer in the lab, when he encountered a problem (usually engineered 
by colleagues), would be invited to test the fuses. He would take them 
over to this instrument, put them in and press the button, which would 
send a 50 A pulse for 1 sec through all the fuses. A panel then lit up 
with the words, "Your fuses were all right!". As "no one" had any spare 
fuses, this then involved a long walk to another building (often in bad 
weather) to get replacements from stores.

Not a joke, but an accident. One of my colleagues was working on a live 
10 kW HF transmitter when his head got too close to the tank coil and an 
RF spark jumped about 5 cm onto his nose. He instictively backed his 
head, hard and straight onto the steel frame of the transmitter. He then 
bounced forward again and did about three cycles of relaxation 
oscillation before someone else was able to pull the plug (incidentally 
grilling the two output valves at a hefty cost, as the cooling fans 
stopped while the anodes were red hot). He was taken to hospital with 
severe 3rd ° burns to the nose (needing extensive plastic surgery) and 
concussion. Really nasty, but also comic to see his head going back and 
forth like a jackhammer, almost like in a cartoon film. Fortunately for 
him, the tank circuit was a capacity-coupled parallel one and not a 
series one in the anode circuit, otherwise he would have received the 
full benefit of 15 kV DC, as well.

Brian



Ingemar Hernefjord (KC/EMW) wrote:
> The younger mates are so serious and selfcontrolled today. We used to have more fun on the job when young. Like this one.
> We used a 30 kV DC supply with 100 meg in series, put finger on, and charged ourselves to plus 30,000 V. You needed thick rubber shoes of course. Walked out to coffee machine or else, met comrade, pointed at his nose and said 'you got something there' and touched his nose. The result was a audiable flash, a shriek, and then you had to defend yourself when the victim hammered on you. We modified the game. Connected the supply to the steal frame of the lab benches. When the chosen object sat down and rolled his chair near the bench, you heard the scream through walls. Next modification could stopped with a disaster. We connected 30,000 Volts to the door handle,and amused every time a selected poor guy jumped high by the flashover. However, one day, we forgot to remove the croc connector from handle, there was a knocking, the handle went down and a bounce on outside. And silence. Someone opened the door, and on outside was a shaky, stammering old postman, retired but doing so
me extra job as elder. We got frightened and asked him what happened. He looked angrily on us, picked up the post from the floor and said "Nothing. Nothing at all" and left. The supply was never used that way any more.
> 
> Used battery gun. We found a whole bunch of used handtorch batteries and 10 feet long plastic tubes and other stuff, left by electricians after house repair. One guy looked thoughtfully on the stuff, took a battery, put it into the end of a plastic tube, went to an open window, grasped a pressurised air pistol and pressed it into the plastic tube, elevated the tube and pressed the "trigger" and off went the battery and landed some 50 meters away. We improved the version, threedoubled the pressure and the whole thing ended in a game to see who could get most batteries into a steel container 100 meters away.
> 
> When television was not allowed on the job. Winter olympic game time and work without knowing what happened. Unacceptable! A guy opened his Tektronix oscilloscope, worked hard on overtime, and after couple of days he was ready. All engineers were gathered in their white coats around the test equipments. The boss appeared wondering why so many guys,  looked over shoulders and saw green sweeps on a  number of CRTs. "Good, they are working hard on the new TWT", he said to the next boss and they left, and closed door. With some simple switch maneuvres on the oscilloscopes, the athletics from the olympic games appeared on the little CRT. Green, everything green, but what...no worries..we could at least see and listen. As soon as a higher-in-rank appeared, someone whistled and..alas..a concentrated group of engineers working hard...
> 
> Soldering iron shooting game. We put a number of 150 Watt soldering irons in vices. Removed copper tip and filled the cavity with the tips from ordinary matches and pressed the copper back into the iron. All electric connectors were plugged into a multipanel with a common switch. All went out, last guy triggered the switch, and we waited. After some minutes something like a machinegun was heard, we opened the door and inspected the wooden wall to see who's copper tip had penetrated deepest into the wood panel.
> 
> Nuts? Idiotic?...yes...but we had fun.
> 
> Ingemar Hernefjord
> Ericsson Microwave Systems
> 
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