back in college in the 1970's, I remember a frat house (about a 100 years old) that had an ancient fuse panel. Located in the middle of the house, don't know if they also had service equipment elsewhere. Memory is a bit dim, but I think it was just a well varnished wooden box with stud terminals used to connect branch circuits to the fuses, and the other end of the fuses to the main bus. One issue was that the frat house had run out of proper fuses, so some of the frat brothers created homemade(!) fuses from sheet lead. Probably the electrical engineering majors! They created a zig-zag pattern, figuring that a longer circuit path might help fuse action. Who knows what amount of overcurrent would be needed to blow these homemade fuses... Any inspector would likely die of fright and/or be rolling on the floor laughing, and then immediately order the POCO to disconnect power and make the frat house get real electricians in for a complete re-wire.
