Eighteenth-century salons were often the theater of glittering "electrical evenings" in which ladies and gentlemen amused themselves by experimenting—even on their own bodies—with attraction, repulsion, shocks, and sparks. In the darkened rooms, traveling "electrifiers" put on theatrical performances that used ingenious devices to display darting snakes of fire, luminescent letters, and aurora borealises in glass jars. Experiments followed one another in a dizzying sequence that also included sparks from Franklin's bells, a blast from Volta's pistol, and the spectacular explosion of the "thunder house."