EPROM Erasers?

Back in elementary school one of the library books had interesting projects in it. One project was to remove the carbon rods from four 'D' cells. They're about 1/4" - 3/8" in diameter and run the length of the cell. It's a bit of a trick to extract them without breaking them. Once you have four carbon rods, suspend two in a jar of salt water. Grip the other two, each with its own wooden clothes pin (the spring type, not the slot type). Now steal a heavy duty electrical cord from something like Mommy's clothes iron. Attach one lead of the cord to one of the carbon rods in the jar of salt water. Connect the other lead to one of the carbon rods held by a clothes pin. Now use a spare length of heavy wire to connect the remaining two carbon rods together. Plug the cord into the wall. Now carefully touch the tips of the two clothes pin carbon rods together and then slowly draw them apart. TADA! Carbon arc. Vary the salt content in the jar to adjust the power. I don't recall the instructions saying anything about not looking directly at the arc. Perhaps this method doesn't generate enough UV to be useful/harmful? I spent a fair bit of time staring at the thing. Thirty-five years later I haven't noticed any vision impairment, but maybe I was young enough for my retina to recover. It was quite the attention getter at the ES science fair. I suspect books in grade schools don't contain cool/dangerous projects like this any more. I only electrocuted myself once or twice by touching the live bits of the contraption... Jeff Walther