This is a note I just sent to the Snopes people;
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/cleaner.htm I have a true, firsthand account that is just like this story!
EDIT: 1970s, not 1980s! I should proofread.
In the late 1970s I worked for Data Systems Sales, an Elgin, IL company that sold small business microcomputer systems. The system we sold the most of was the Infotecs IMP, a computer that consisted of a large white box with the processor, memory, and two or four 8" floppy disk drives, and a monitor/keyboard unit and a lineprinter.
Inside of the white box was a very large regulated power supply which in addition to running the computer itself supplied regulated power to two outlets on the back of the unit into which you plugged the monitor and the lineprinter.
Now, we had a sub-distributor in a nearby city, Rockford, IL, who had one of these systems for demonstration use, and was also using it to keep their books.
They were really upset with us, though, as the system kept failing them, and they would lose all the data they had entered.
Routinely, they would call us, and we would drive out there only to find that the system seemed to be working fine. We'd replace the unit with a spare and take it back to the shop where we would test the heck out of it and nothing would fail.
Finally, in frustration, one of our technicians, Jim McClouth, decided he would wait there the whole day and SEE it fail.
He showed up at 6 AM, well before they opened, and actually entered the building with the very first employee, got a chair, sat it across from the computer, and waited. By 7:30 AM the office secretary had booted the machine and was entering data.
All went fine until 10 AM, when everybody stopped working.
The secretary got a large coffee urn out of the closet, filled it with water, coffee, and set it on the desk next to the computer.
You see this coming don't you?
She unplugged the lineprinter from the back of the computer box and plugged in the coffee urn. Of course that was far too many amps for the poor power supply, and the computer crashed, destroying her morning's work.
Seems the computer had been plugged into the outlet that they routinely used to make coffee, and they saw the outlets on the back as nothing more than an extension cord!
Feel free to use this story on the page if you like.
-Ben Burch
Elgin, IL