> I can vouch there must have been a great magnetic field moving
> through my house that day as every one of my TV's had their CRT's
> magnetized.
A tiny field creates that distortion. Nuclear submarines suffer a similar effect by simply traversing oceans. A tiny degaussing coil of similar strength automatically undoes residual fields in that CRT.
Meanwhile, lightning struck a lightning rod. Maybe 20,000 amps flowed from that rod to earth. Some four feet away from that wire and 20,000 amps was an IBM PC. It did not even blink. That field is much larger than anything you saw in your house. It did not affect an IBM PC, nearby digital watches, mobile phones, digital clocks, or anything else. The most sensitive transistors connect to a radio antenna. To amplify tiny radio fields. Even those were not harmed. Because a field created by 20,000 amps is made irrelevant by protection already inside all electronics.
Damage means a current had both an incoming and an outgoing path. Only then can internal protection be overwhelmed.
Was the transformer damaged? Or some other internal part? Valid conclusions do not exist without knowing specifically what internal part failed. And every electrically conductive material it was in contact with. Even concrete is an electrical conductor.
We did this stuff. If damage occurred, we had to find the human created mistake that permitted an incoming and outgoing current. That current always explained the damage. But many items you may have assumed are insulators (ie floor tile) are actually electrical conductors.
> through my house that day as every one of my TV's had their CRT's
> magnetized.
A tiny field creates that distortion. Nuclear submarines suffer a similar effect by simply traversing oceans. A tiny degaussing coil of similar strength automatically undoes residual fields in that CRT.
Meanwhile, lightning struck a lightning rod. Maybe 20,000 amps flowed from that rod to earth. Some four feet away from that wire and 20,000 amps was an IBM PC. It did not even blink. That field is much larger than anything you saw in your house. It did not affect an IBM PC, nearby digital watches, mobile phones, digital clocks, or anything else. The most sensitive transistors connect to a radio antenna. To amplify tiny radio fields. Even those were not harmed. Because a field created by 20,000 amps is made irrelevant by protection already inside all electronics.
Damage means a current had both an incoming and an outgoing path. Only then can internal protection be overwhelmed.
Was the transformer damaged? Or some other internal part? Valid conclusions do not exist without knowing specifically what internal part failed. And every electrically conductive material it was in contact with. Even concrete is an electrical conductor.
We did this stuff. If damage occurred, we had to find the human created mistake that permitted an incoming and outgoing current. That current always explained the damage. But many items you may have assumed are insulators (ie floor tile) are actually electrical conductors.