It was discovered back in '07, by the board’s own @Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker.
Here’s the thread, although the link he originally posted is dead. It’s the exact same clip, though.
And the biggest mystery the board ever faced was 14 K of G.
Is it possible that they were seismological instruments?
I cannot speak to the state of seismological instruments during the Depression, but I did work in a seismological equipment factory for a while; and while what we produced was far beyond anything that was produced ten years ago, never mind sixty; we did produce “suitcase-sized” control centers that connected to seismic cable that connected to geophones. Our customers used them to look for oil deposits, but they were also good for detecting earthquakes.
Might these “suitcases” have been seismic equipment?
Is it not possible for a faulty electrical device to take down the local grid? I feel like I’ve seen that portrayed in movies or TV shows, so if it’s not a real thing, it’s at least a media thing that OP’s dad might have seen at some point. That could be the seed of a false memory.
I’ve discovered a few false memories of my own, as well as some I’m not sure about. I have a memory of tattooed moving men being the ones to tell me my family was moving, a concept I didn’t fully grasp, when I was 4. I traced this back to a book I’d read after my mother told me there were definitely no tattoos on site when we moved; our moving men had been their long-time friends.
I also recently discovered a strange one I can’t explain. I watched Kerri Strug’s famous vault at the '96 Olympics on TV. I was just shy of my 13th birthday, so not a little kid. But for some reason, I remember her hobbling, stumbling, and ultimately only scoring a two-point-something on that second vault. I remember this being enough somehow with the point system, and her being a national hero and everything. But it wasn’t until the whole Simone Biles thing this summer, when everyone was making comparisons to Strug, that I found out she pulled off a magnificent 9.712 on that injured ankle. How did I get that one so wrong?
I also have a memory of getting to shoot real rifles at paper targets with human outlines on a tour of the FBI headquarters during an 8th grade field trip to Washington, DC. That one can’t be real…right?
Ok, I’ve told this story before on this board.
Basically, when I was a kid, I went out and looked up at the night’s sky. I could see all the planets. They were huge! I could see the red spot on Jupiter, the rings around Saturn etc…
The only reason I know this memory isn’t real is bc I know that’s impossible. It still FEELS real though.
I don’t know how electrical systems were designed in the 1930s and 1940s. Presumably there was a fuse box in each home. The “worse” thing you can do is plug something into a receptacle that is a short circuit, which would simply result in the fuse for the circuit (10 A rating? 15 A rating? 20 A rating?) blowing.
Thinking worse case… let’s say someone replaced the fuse (for the circuit) with a coin or something. Did those fuse boxes have a master fuse? I don’t know. If they did have a master fuse, then the master fuse would blow. If they did not have a master fuse, then I could see it causing problems outside the home.
Ever been to a planetarium?
What? Oh, you mean the planearium?
I can’t speak to that but I do know that he grew up very poor. They couldn’t have been living in the most modern of conditions. As a handyman I’ve seen some pretty deplorable conditions, even today.
nm did not catch the intended irony
I see nothing implausible in the idea that a couple of boxes of random electrical equipment, hooked together by a kid, might have a dead short in it. Nor do I see anything implausible in the idea of plugging in a dead short causing a power outage to multiple homes, especially in the early days of home electrification.
I have a recurring dream where I’m outside at night, and look up and see multiple images of the Moon in the sky, of a variety of different sizes (up through maybe 45 degrees across; the larger ones are always faint). In my dream, I always know that this is just some rare but natural atmospheric optical phenomenon causing the illusion, and that it’s no cause for alarm, but wow, it’s cool that I’m seeing it.
No idea what prompts that dream.
I also have a memory that I think is real, of driving somewhere with my dad, and looking out the window and seeing two suns in the sky (both the same size). I told Dad “Look, Daddy, there are two suns!”, and he just said “No, that must just be the Moon”, and kept driving (never mind that it was much too bright to be the Moon, and the Sun and full Moon couldn’t have been together in the sky anyway). Much later, Dad said that he remembered me saying that, at least. But I’m still not sure why he didn’t pull over and take a look himself.
That one, in retrospect, I figure must have been an unusually bright sun dog, but I still don’t know.
No, the planarium. The cute little flatworm with crossed eyes.
Hmmm, flatworm → flat earth → planets filling the sky… it all makes sense now.
Nope.
Gold coin, maybe.
Fellow Illuminatiuns, I fear digs is onto us!
I knew you’d know best. It’s a sin to waste a straight line.
Happy 
Doperversary @gaspescado
Even the 1930’s electrical panels had a Master Fuse – typically 60 Amps, then usually a 30 amp fuse (electric stove or clothes dryer) and 4 15- or 20-Amp individual circuit fuses.
So a direct short would blow the individual 15 or 20 Amp circuit, and then if it pulled more than 60 amps, would blow the master fuse in the box. (And that means the wires in the circuit he plugged into were carrying 60 amps+ – a real fire risk!)
After that, there is a circuit interrupter in the transformer that’s hanging on a pole, and typically feeds 3-4 houses. Now that would be a circuit breaker, with automatic reclosers, but in the 1930’s might have been just a one-shot fuse.
But that still wouldn’t kill power to a whole neighborhood – just the few houses that were on that transformer. Now 3-4 houses might be what your dad considered ‘an entire neighborhood’. Or possibly in 1930 more houses were connected to a single transformer – a typical house back then had a 60 amp supply; now 100 amps is the minimum, and new houses are commonly wired for 200 amps.
But it still seems unlikely for this to have happened.
when the individual circuit fuse of 15 or 20 amps blew, the circuit was opened, so there should have been no current to blow the 60 amp house master fuse. And after that no current to blow the distribution transformer fuse . Even a direct short circuit should only blow the first fuse, and then the circuit is dead before the overload reaches the later fuses. That’s the way they are designed to work. (Possibly they weren’t designed that well in the 1930’s? Seems unlikely; electricity was new & scary back then, and the fire risk was well known.)
It really is. But I’ve done it so many times over the last few years, It hurts. The ‘Delete’ key is nearly worn out.
For years I told everyone that I honked the horn on the monorail at the 1964 World’s Fair, and I believed it myself. My other monorail memory, and I’m pretty sure this one is real, is of riding it and seeing over the fence a regular old carnival midway and thinking I’d rather be there.