> *raises hand*
> Umn.. I'm the builder of said device. It was a 230V-to-4.5V 
> transformer run in 
> reverse from 9V DC, followed by a two-stage Cockroft-Walton voltage 
> multiplier. It pulled 500V open-circuit, then after a bit of 
> tweaking we got 
> it up to 700 and started pulling small arcs with it. Then IIRC 
> Peter picked up 
> one of the output wires to do something, and brushed his hand against the 
> other output.
hmm my memory of the details is a little different to yours

iirc it was a 240V to 3V transformer and we had somewhat more than 4.5V on the input (we were using a wall wart set to 12V to power the driver cuircuit iirc), we got the 700V and I got the shock before we put the rectifier/multiplier on the output.

i distinctly remember getting a multimeter on the 1000V DC range to read as off scale!


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