Yep, the government had to go house-by-house, building-by-building replacing all electrically powered devices that could not be adapted. Thankfully it also happened early in the era of electronic devices.
it's substantially easier to run modern electronics off random frequency power than other stuff like an induction motor. A typical power supply is rated for 47 Hz- 63 Hz. But it'll happily run off almost anything higher than 10 hz and lower than 1000 hz.
universal motors in particular do not care at all about frequency
universal motors in particular do not care at all about frequency