The power of taste

You could always stick your fingers in a mains socket. That fabled figure from the history of IT – the BBC engineer – makes a guest appearance in our thread on the taste of electricity.
‘My father, a professional radio engineer, once told me he knew a BBC engineer in the early days who would stand on a chair, insert two fingers in a socket and state whether the supply was AC or DC,’ says Professor Peter Hill at Cranfield University.
‘He survived all the demos presumably as he didn’t put his tongue up there too.’
And for more insight into how we used to live, check out these books from the era before the first 10 pages of any science book were occupied with cheesy dedications: www.easyontheeye.net/ladybird/60s/621/621.htm (thanks to Nichlas Booth at RBS). What on earth is a bodkin?