This Henry vacuum cleaner arrived with no signs of life at all.

The history was that there had been intermittent activity “when the cable was wiggled” – suggesting that the cable was losing contact at one end (in the plug) or the other (inside the machine).

Using a “volt stick” or ‘non-contact voltage detector’ it was very easy to determine that neither of these theories was correct. In fact, the live-side conductor was broken some distance from the end, almost certainly due to over zealous pulling the cable out of the coil.