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[Lance Rectanus]

In 4th grade a friend and I had collected a number of speakers from various inoperative devices. We wired them up in my Dad's basement workshop to an old tube radio. To connect them we used 15A Edison sockets and plugs that my Dad had sitting around. This worked great for us. Not so great though when my Dad came down one day and plugged one of our speakers into the wall outlet, thinking he was plugging in a light. I had to immediately remove all the speakers and wiring I had done.

[Steve M Smith]

As a child, I spent many hours in my grandfather's shed.  During WW II, he was based on a radar station in the Orkney Islands (north of Scotland): http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/n/netherbutton_chain_home/index.shtml Although the radar stations were controlled by the Royal Air Force, they were maintained by the Royal Engineers (part of the army) of which he was a member.

At the end of the war he was posted to Germany and put to work repairing radio and radar equipment there.

When he was sent home, he brought a big box of Mullard EF50 valves: http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0098.htm and numerous other items with him and built an amateur band superhet with plug in coils.  This piece of equipment fascinated me for many years.

When I was old enough to understand (probably about ten) he started to teach me how valves worked and slowly, I learned.

At middle school I started playing around with the school's record players, tape recorders and extension speakers - then at high school I was pleased to find an actual stage with Rank Strand rheostat lighting and a 100 volt line PA with column speakers.  For the next five years, all of this was mine!!


Steve.

[Robert Lofgren]

This scrapyard thing got me remember when I found a car stereo (it was actually mono!) that had a small pcbs that you could pull out and re-insert in an other position and thereby have it configured for 6/12v operation and reverse polarity (the early days of a phase switch I guess ;-)

I was in 5th grade or something. I took that radio and mounted it onto my bike and ran the power from the light dynamo and also mounted some smallish speaker. It sounded great, unless I was standing still.

This was later upgraded to a 12v stereo device using two dynamos to get the 12v.

[Lee Douglas]

I've been taking stuff apart (and occasionally reassembling) for as long as I can remember.  I always had Heathkits and other electronic, chemistry, meteorology, astronomy Skil Lab kits around.  I loved bread boarding and circuit bending any electronic toy that made noise.   All my allowance went to Radio Shack, back when they racks and walls of components. 

One of my favorite books as a young lad of 8 or 9 was a physics book from the 1950's.  It's where I learned the theory of circuitry and the circuit.  One my earliest brushes with electricity was in trying to put this theory, as least as I understood it, into practice.  So I chopped the ends off of several of mom's good lamps and wired them up in series thinking that if I could move the wire from power from the wall to the other end of the circuit fast enough, I'd have a closed loop light circuit that would stay perpetually lit. For some reason it didn't work.  A few good 120v bites and breaker trips later followed by an obligatory paddling and it was back to the drawing board!

[Robert Lofgren]

One of my first encounters with advanced electronics was when I got an electronics kit, made by the german company philips, at the age of 9.

I collected all of the kits over the next two years and when you've done that you got an actual crt. The most advanced project was to build your own TV receiver!

One cool project was to transfer electricity over air. I could light a small lightbulb 10cm away. However, the neighbors quickly found out who was interfering with their tv and radio reception...

[Stephen Swaffer]

I got my start because I was intrigued with RC models-but could not afford the radio equipment-so my dad pointed at HAM radio and said learn to build your own.  I never did-but in the process he dug out a bunch of his tube stuff-EICO VTVM, an audio amp or two and a Heathkit shortwave receiver that no longer worked-turns out an IF transformer was open and obsolete to boot.  We found an old AM radio at a yard sale and salvaged an IF transformer form that to repair the receiver which still works.

Oddly enough this all led to my becoming an electrical contractor.  I was working in a factory and they needed an Electrician/electronics tech (pretty narrow field you think?).  I figured it was the best paying job in the plant and I could do what I had seen their previous "electrician" doing so I threw my name on the hat.  They gave me a 40 question test to test my knowledg-about 25% of the questions were over tubes (ID the cathode/plate/screeen etc)  a couple questions over basic PN junctions and ohms law (IIRC, zero questions over code/grounding or the like)-and this was 1997!  Because I had no money for "modern" gear in the 80's I aced a test that none of their engineers could ace and got the job (making me "qualified" to open 480 Volt 1200 amp panels) I job I now know I had no business trying to do.  I was the only electrician and about all I knew regarding 3 phase was that if you switched 2 wires you could reverse a motor.  Somehow I survived enough mistakes to eventually get my master's license.

Before Mike started this thread I thought about asking where we would be if Edison Tesla and others-JR, Mike etc had always deferred to "professional technicians".  How many mistakes does it take to make you a professional? 

In any case, I would strongly suggest that ANY test bench (even those of professional tech) should have GFCI circuits to power any gear that is being worked on with an open chassis or when experimenting or prototyping is being done.  That bit of safety technology was not available "back in the day"-but it is really quite inexpensive today.

[Mike Sokol]

Before Mike started this thread I thought about asking where we would be if Edison Tesla and others-JR, Mike etc had always deferred to "professional technicians".  How many mistakes does it take to make you a professional?

I tend to learn a lot more from my mistakes than from my successes. In fact, I spend a lot of time dissecting my failures to find out exactly what went wrong. So while I may not know all the RIGHT ways to do something, I know a lot of WRONG ways to avoid the next time. Since there seems to be so many miswiring conditions out there, I've been creating them on purpose just so I can see how they act and measure under real world conditions.

[Jonathan Johnson]

I tend to learn a lot more from my mistakes than from my successes. In fact, I spend a lot of time dissecting my failures to find out exactly what went wrong. So while I may not know all the RIGHT ways to do something, I know a lot of WRONG ways to avoid the next time. Since there seems to be so many miswiring conditions out there, I've been creating them on purpose just so I can see how they act and measure under real world conditions.

I think that with some of the most prolific inventors, it's the same way. Just because a method failed in one application doesn't mean it will fail in another application, and what you learn from the first failure may pave the way to doing something else in a new and different way. If you're willing to learn WHY something failed, you can apply that knowledge in other ways. If you did A to get B but got C instead, now you know what to do when you WANT to get C!

[Steve M Smith]

My step grandfather was perpetually dehydrated. (I rarely saw him drink ANYthing.) As a result, the electrical resistance of his skin was very high. He would work on 120V wiring and feel nothing.

I'm the same.  240v is just a mild tingle and I can barely tell if it's 120v.

One of my first encounters with advanced electronics was when I got an electronics kit, made by the german company philips, at the age of 9.

I think I had the same one.  It had a perforated board over which you put a printed card with the layout.  At every junction you inserted a hairpin clip and a spring.  Wires and components were connected by pulling down the spring, inserting the wire and letting the spring go.  There were also transistors on square bits of PCB which fitted onto three of the springs.  Each project also had a printed card front panel overlay.

My primary school bought this kit just to give me something to do to stop me getting bored (I had a very good and supportive headmaster).  After a couple of years my parents bought it from the school for £!.

This is it in radio form:



Component close up:




Steve.

[Robert Lofgren]

I think I had the same one.  It had a perforated board over which you put a printed card with the layout.  At every junction you inserted a hairpin clip and a spring.  Wires and components were connected by pulling down the spring, inserting the wire and letting the spring go.  There were also transistors on square bits of PCB which fitted onto three of the springs.  Each project also had a printed card front panel overlay.

Looks about the same, but mine was in some kind of blue plastic instead of cardboard and it had a fixed panel.

I had lots of fun with it 

Since the manual only came in german I had to go to the library and painstakingly translate german into swedish. That dictionary didn't have much tech terminology so it took a while to do. However, I learnt german at least 

[ProSoundWeb Community]