Copyright (C) Ronald E. Madsen, Jr., October 3, 2010 – All Rights Reserved
When I was 15, I owned a single-channel audio amplifier that had been made in 1956 by Electronic Instrument Company (EICO). My father and I bought the used amplifier from a stereo shop. I used it to listen to music on a home-made system. The amplifier included a high-voltage power supply that drove the final-stage vacuum tubes.
One afternoon, I decided I would try to correct an internal feedback problem in the amplifier. I unplugged the AC power cord, and cautiously removed the base plate from the five-sided box chassis, exposing the hand-wired electronics within.
I had been warned by my father and by numerous authors that there were dangerously high voltages that could still be present in the circuitry of the amplifier, even after pulling the AC plug. Electrical energy could easily be retained in the capacitors used to create the DC power supply for the vacuum tubes.
“I know all about this,” I thought. I methodically went through the circuits and shorted out all the high voltages with a wire. I made sure that each attempt to short out a supply voltage resulted in a blue spark and a loud snap sound. After a few seconds, I knew I had eliminated the threat posed by the invisible stored energy. I was sure it was safe to proceed.
I found myself sitting on the concrete floor, legs outstretched, with my back pressed hard against the front of a dented furnace. I ached all over, as if I had suddenly played football in the rain for a week straight. The brown, wheeled desk chair I had been sitting on was now upside down in the center of the room. I could smell a strong, unhappy odor of burnt skin. That was me. I had been burned. I had been electrically shocked. The amplifier’s most dangerous power supply capacitor had sent a brief but very large electric current into one of my hands and out the other, visiting important, invisible things, such as my heart, along the way.
One moment, I was at my work bench. The next conscious instant, I was at the opposite side of the room. I sat there on the floor, marveling at my new perspective, contemplating the burning smell, not remembering my evident flight across the room, realizing that I could be dead. What if I were found by my parents in such condition? Very slowly, I stood up.
All my good intentions and attempts at caution did not win me any special treatment from Mother Nature’s physics department. Instead, Mother Nature ordered her physics department to send me a remarkably powerful and extremely memorable message. Here are the words I believe She said to me:
“You were sure. But you were wrong. There was something you overlooked before you took that step; something hidden, unobserved, misunderstood – a 450-volt-something. My laws are unchanging, and for justice, and to be fair to everyone, I cannot make any exceptions. A few more microseconds, a few more milliamperes, and your heart would be ruined – you would be on your way back home to your Creator. But not today. Learn, study, and remember. Please.”
As a teenager, I believed that Mother Nature had a few other departments, including one for morality. The facts of my own life and the lives of other people seem to line up with this notion. I have seen the greatest things accomplished through deep understanding of principles not visible to the eye, yet very clear to the disciplined mind and soul. I have observed burns and painful shocks of a non-electrical nature. Some have brought me to tears, over and over.
My father gave me many things to explore when I was young. They were very real, and they were very powerful. Some were dangerous. All of them helped me find freedom and success as nothing else could. In a fool’s instant, one nearly killed me. Dad said, “You can make any choice you want, but first, know and consider the consequences.” Thanks, Dad, for all the real and true things you taught me. I know what love is.
“Each to his own way, I’ll go mine.
Best of luck in what you find.
But for your own sake, remember times
we used to know.” – Ian Anderson