He then passed 48V across it for a few seconds from his bench PSU (the chip was rated at 3.something to 8,something volts, IIRC)
At school (many, many years ago) I put 240v AC through a 12v transistor. It glowed like an LED for a short while before suffering rapid unscheduled disassembly (which left part of the metal cover embedded in the suspended ceiling tile..)