Tesla had figured out the math for the minimum safe distance from his coils and had a habit of building the biggest one he could get away with in the shop space he had. Which meant they tended to nearly exactly fit into his workshop.
Which led to a situation mentioned in one of his biographies, where he was on the far side of the shop and somehow the switch got thrown. It was either make a new exit through a wall or window, or leverage the fact that discharges are sphere shaped but shops are generally box-shaped; army crawl out through the little 'triangle' of space between the floor and the wall/benches outside of the radius. I would hope some new safety protocols were introduced after that, but I couldn't rightly say. The rest of that story sort of overshadows such details in your memory.
Which led to a situation mentioned in one of his biographies, where he was on the far side of the shop and somehow the switch got thrown. It was either make a new exit through a wall or window, or leverage the fact that discharges are sphere shaped but shops are generally box-shaped; army crawl out through the little 'triangle' of space between the floor and the wall/benches outside of the radius. I would hope some new safety protocols were introduced after that, but I couldn't rightly say. The rest of that story sort of overshadows such details in your memory.