Circuit breaker: did I damage it?

Why would any sane person do that?

no, holding the handle will NOT prevent a breaker from tripping if it wants to

Mark

Correct.

Though it was a dumb thing to do, it should not have damaged the breaker

sting for voltage the circuit breaker tripped.

Curious thing, how did that happen, while you were "testing for voltage"?

wanted to, I held it for a couple seconds (and it made a buzzing noise.) Could that have damaged it? I haven't noticed anything odd about it since (smell, noise, etc).

So, apparently you had a momentary dead short while testing for voltage, that short that should only have then existed while you were testing, then managed to become permanent and then you doubled down by allegedly holding the breaker closed? Sure, I believe that. In my experience, those that create dead shorts while working on a switch are the first to run for the hills when anything appears to be wrong . It's hard to believe any real person is going to hold a breaker that is tripping, especially due to a known fault that you just created.

That's how I thought they worked too. Which means this is almost surely a troll and it never happened.

Like the woman I knew, the breaker to the furnace tripped. She reset it a dozen or so times. Until it stayed on.

First problem, the $50 blower motor shorted out. But when she power surged it a dozen times, it vaporized the relays on the $250 circuit board.

When my Dad was doing training, one of the wisdom "yesterday's solutions will be used on today's problems, even if they are not appropriate.

"Jiggle the handle" eh?

Hi. You just modified breaker's rated spec. to unknown state.

Let's not lose sight of her goal. The breaker stayed on.

I've seen bigger degrees of idiocy.

Back in my working days a guy in another department wanted to borrow my variable DC supply. I saw that he had an inverter on his bench and he also had a power supply.

He told me that his power supply could not deliver enough current and he wanted to put the inverter on a larger supply to just plain "burn out" whichever component was shorted.

I looked at the inverter and there were two power transistors, a transformer and little else.

I told him that almost for sure he just had a shorted power transistor.

He told me he tested one and it was good.

I then had to tell that idiot that the OTHER transistor must be the shorted one. Sheesh. That was the problem of course.