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Post by schlager7 on May 6, 2006 18:58:35 GMT -6
A man named John Lusby who fenced at UT in the late 1960s and early 1970s, sent me the following anecdote involving electric foil fencing in those halcyon days...
It takes place at the Mustang Invitational, possibly in 1970 or 1971:
There were lots of electrical problems with the equipment as the gym was not air conditioned. One match of note a little girl with braces would light up whenever she was touched (sparks in her braces). She could really parry!
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Post by kd5mdk on May 6, 2006 21:53:48 GMT -6
That sounds quite scary.
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Post by vraptor on May 7, 2006 1:47:47 GMT -6
Well, as an old physics professor of mine once told me when I grabbed both ends of a live signal generator output, "Don't worry. Your body resistance is several megohms. You won't draw much current."
One of these days, I'm going to take my voltmeter and actually see what kind of voltage you have at the connectors. I wouldn't think it would be much, but with the proliferation of scoring boxes, you never know.
Does anybody remember that episode of "Lost In Space" where Guy Williams reprises his old Zorro role by fencing with high voltage sabres? As I recall, the opponent was Micheal Ansara and they used standard fencing sabres just like they did in the old Zorro series. I don't know what the special effects people did to generate the sparks, but I wouldn't put it past Irwin Allen to do something really dumb. I don't recall if they used masks. Probably not so you could see the actor's faces, but they did wear gloves as I recall. Of course, I was about eleven at the time so my memory is a little spotty on that.
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Post by schlager7 on May 7, 2006 6:24:02 GMT -6
An internet acquaintance named Chris Holzman out of Kansas sent me this: John,
I'm certain that the part about sparks is absolutely true.
We had (until a couple years ago, 4 or 5 at most) an old foil/epee box that ran on vaccum tubes and capacitors/resistors. We called it "ole sparky". It was probably built in the 1950's.
On foil, if you had sweat through your lame and mask bib, every time you were touched, there would be enough current that you would get shocked a little bit. about like sticking your tongue on a nine volt battery, or maybe a little more.
If you hit your opponent, and they had their mouth open (and having previously sweat through their lame/mask), you could watch the current arc between their teeth.
being teenagers (for the most part), once it got dark out, we'd turn the lights down and fence foil, specifically to zap each ther. We had an unairconditioned facility on the second floor of a building built in the 1930s, and summers in Wichita routinely stay around the 100-105 degree mark, with lows in the 80s at night, building temp was almost always well over 90 to 115 during class, so sweating through our stuff wasn't a problem.
So yeah, absolutely true.
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nemo
Blademaster
mobilis in mobili
Posts: 729
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Post by nemo on May 7, 2006 13:06:24 GMT -6
Who says Kansas is dull?!?!!?!??!
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Post by schlager7 on May 7, 2006 18:47:04 GMT -6
Well, Bill Towry (who would be much more familiar with this sort of equipment than I) wrote:
As far as the little girl "lighting up" when hit I too doubt that she really lit up, but the electrical machines that were in use at the time frequently caused mild shocks when the fencer's glove and other uniform parts became saturated with perspiration. The moisture caused built up electrical potential to be conducted thru the glove to the fencer and thru the wet bib of the mask causing a tingly salty taste in the mouth of the fencer.
Been there, Done that.
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Post by LongBlade on May 9, 2006 0:58:09 GMT -6
I've never heard of anyone ever actually "lighting up" on the old machines, but I know from personal experience that when you sweated out your lame, some of 'em would wake you up better than truck stop coffee! OUCH!
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