My grandfather was an engineer and his house was full of interesting electrical appliances. One day we found this really weird-looking device that had little spools of metal wire running through it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_recording). We decided to hook it up to see if we could get it to work ... a 110V machine that hadn't been used since the fifties ... to a 220V power outlet. I still feel bad about that to this day: the machine was a technical marvel & probably belonged in a museum.