The switching on and off of electric devices is usually characterized by their instantaneous response. The presence of inductors with large self-inductance can, however, cause considerable delays. Iron cores can lead to additional delays resulting from a change of the magnetization. Such delays, extending over minutes, will be shown here. A large copper spool is wound on a heavy closed iron core. It can be connected with a switch to a 2 volt accumulator (lead-acid battery) and a projection ammeter of short response time (less than 1 sec). The time is measured with a large, hand-operated (historic) stopwatch. These experiments always are extremely surprising, considering that we tend to associate electric phenomena with the idea of the instantaneous, the timeless.