This is similar to my experience. I would only add that electricity/electronics gave me a new set of thinking tools that helped me understand other, non-electronic topics better and more quickly. The electronic concepts gave me a different way to approach problem solving that I’ve always appreciated.

+1

This book (it was a 40's edition) was my first radio and electronics bible as a kid. One of my great uncles left it at my grandmother's house after the Korean war. I didn't understand a thing at first but could see similar circuits in the old radios we had on the farm.
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/B...a-of-Radio-and-Electronics-Manly-9th-1939.pdf


I learned a valuable lesson from that book, even if you don't understand it, then, the young brain will retain some sort of memory link pattern from it that will be used to organise other known information that eventually (with more reading and study) will make the new information understandable in sometimes small steps.

 

There was a branch of Tandy in Lincoln and I started with the same RadioShack 100-in-1 kit as @Ya’akov (post #12). Then my father taught me to solder, and bought me the Ladybird book of Making a Transistor Radio.
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/B...ng-a-Transistor-Radio-Ladybird Books-1972.pdf
and we bought surplus components from Birkett's shop.
https://www.visitlincoln.com/things-to-do/j-birkett

 

My father returned from WWII and completed his BSEE. I just took after him, born in 1950 and growing up NYC I had an endless supply of WWII and Korea War era electronic surplus. By 1963 I had gravitated into ham radio and NYC Canal Street was surplus paradise. I worked my Saturdays on Canal Street and took my pay out in trade. My first transmitters were surplus ARC 5 Command sets. Just a few hacks and you were good for 75 watts of CW. My first commercial transmitter was a Heathkit DX 40. The electronics bug remained throughout military time including more schools. Following about 9 years military I began working for NAESU (Naval Aviation Engineering Support Unit) and my career extended from Naval Air to Naval Sea including Naval Reactor systems for our submarines and aircraft carriers. I finally retired in 2013 ending a long and very enjoyable career which had me living globally but I loved my job. Hard to believe over 10 years have passed since retiring. Today I play around with a few projects and a few micro-controllers more to stay amused than much else.

Yep, it all began with dad. My brother 10 years behind me was more into the arts and no interest in electronics. Two sisters also more into the arts so I was the only one to follow our father. Every time I asked dad something he would just hand me another book and suggest I read it.

Ron

 

By 1963 I had gravitated into ham radio and NYC Canal Street was surplus paradise. I worked my Saturdays on Canal Street and took my pay out in trade. My first transmitters were surplus ARC 5 Command sets. Just a few hacks and you were good for 75 watts of CW. My first commercial transmitter was a Heathkit DX 40.
Ron

I have heard all these wonderful stories about NYC’s Canal street.
Is it all gone today??

 

My father returned from WWII and completed his BSEE. I just took after him, born in 1950 and growing up NYC I had an endless supply of WWII and Korea War era electronic surplus. By 1963 I had gravitated into ham radio and NYC Canal Street was surplus paradise. I worked my Saturdays on Canal Street and took my pay out in trade. My first transmitters were surplus ARC 5 Command sets. Just a few hacks and you were good for 75 watts of CW. My first commercial transmitter was a Heathkit DX 40. The electronics bug remained throughout military time including more schools. Following about 9 years military I began working for NAESU (Naval Aviation Engineering Support Unit) and my career extended from Naval Air to Naval Sea including Naval Reactor systems for our submarines and aircraft carriers. I finally retired in 2013 ending a long and very enjoyable career which had me living globally but I loved my job. Hard to believe over 10 years have passed since retiring. Today I play around with a few projects and a few micro-controllers more to stay amused than much else.

Yep, it all began with dad. My brother 10 years behind me was more into the arts and no interest in electronics. Two sisters also more into the arts so I was the only one to follow our father. Every time I asked dad something he would just hand me another book and suggest I read it.

Ron

One of the biggest disappointments I can recall was when I went to manhattan with my father (he worked on Canal) and he wanted to take me to the surplus district. After a confusing cruise around the area he realized the WTC had been built on top of it.

 

One of the biggest disappointments I can recall was when I went to Manhattan with my father (he worked on Canal) and he wanted to take me to the surplus district. After a confusing cruise around the area he realized the WTC had been built on top of it.

Several years ago, maybe 15 years ago I showed the wife Canal Street and explained its former glory. Today one side is Chinatown and the other side is Little Italy as it always was but it seems Little Italy is shrinking. Sure was great growing up and having all of that at my disposal.

Ron

 

I think it was 1985 and my step-grandmother bought me a 200 in 1 kit for Christmas.

 

Hello,

I think it was about 1968 when I got a Amroh 402 coil with a variable capacitor , a diode and a headphone.
http://pa2rf.blogspot.com/2014/05/

Later I got the EE boxes from philips:
http://ee.old.no/
I did have the kits from the 1000 series.
I still have the parts, but the board is gone.

Bertus

 

My first solid state device. !

 

My first interest was when my uncle gave the "65-in-1 Electronics Kit" from Radio Shack. I don't recall exactly how old I was, but somewhere around 9 or 10 years old, so this was in the 1975 time frame. I built many of the projects, not understanding the vast majority of what I was doing, but still fascinated by wiring these things together according to a diagram and having it do something "real", and then wiring those same things together according to a different diagram and have that same things do something else that was not only "real", but very different. The simple projects I could grasp the gist of what was happening, enough to make simple changes and get it to behave differently, but in a different way that was by my design.

Nothing more really came of it until I was a junior in high school and I took an electronics class, which was pretty basic and focused more on things like residential wiring (our final exam was to wire a bare-framed room with several types of circuits according to code). But as part of that class, we had to do a little personal project and I build a 555-based code practice oscillator, that I still have somewhere. It was, once again, a case of following someone else's schematic, but this involved laying out a PCB and etching it and then populating it and packaging it all up in a project box.

My next foray was the next summer when I decided to put a dual electrical system in my truck to power radios and lights overnight without risking draining the battery I would need to start the truck the next day (I was heavily involved in Search and Rescue at the time). While that was most straight up switches and relays, I added some features that I was able to do only because of that one-time experience making a PCB in that electronics class, as well as the circuits stuff that we learned in my physics class.

 

Those Radio Shack kits have a lot to answer for on both sides of the Atlantic!

 

Those Radio Shack kits have a lot to answer for on both sides of the Atlantic!

They do -- and I sure wish there were things like them readily available today.

Oh, I know that there are kits out there -- and some pretty interesting ones -- but I haven't see the kind of gazillion-in-one type kits that there used to be (but there probably are some). But, more to the point, those kits were readily available and on store shelves when people were Christmas or birthday shopping -- they weren't things that people had to go out of their way specifically to find.

But even if that were still the case today, I don't think it would make much of a difference -- people, including kids (especially kids?) want instant gratification with whizbang graphics and sound that they don't have to work for. There is, after all, a reason that those kits aren't still on store shelves.

 

They do -- and I sure wish there were things like them readily available today.

Oh, I know that there are kits out there -- and some pretty interesting ones -- but I haven't see the kind of gazillion-in-one type kits that there used to be (but there probably are some). But, more to the point, those kits were readily available and on store shelves when people were Christmas or birthday shopping -- they weren't things that people had to go out of their way specifically to find.

But even if that were still the case today, I don't think it would make much of a difference -- people, including kids (especially kids?) want instant gratification with whizbang graphics and sound that they don't have to work for. There is, after all, a reason that those kits aren't still on store shelves.

On the shelf, that era is behind us for lots of things but there are still plenty of kits for kids today and plenty of kids that would love one as a gift. My girl, that's now learning about the magnetic fields, field lines and cross products in her physics classes, did.