For those who only came to electronics in the last 50 years,THIS (below) is a breadboard.



In the last 1970's a company (I think it was Pamona) came out with the first of those plastic plug-in breadboards. Between the times radio amateurs were pounding nails and screws in planks of wood and young techies started plugging CMOS IC's into plastic breadboards, a breadboard was any circuit that was not on a printed circuit board or in anther formal structure suitable for commercial production.

I only built one wooden breadboard. It was a spark transmitter when in Junior high school, which became a neighborhood nuisance. I still remember the time my friend Gary decided to light a cigar in the spark. I am sure Gary vividly remembers it too.

As late as 1982 in one job we designed a line of low cost monochrome medical monitors that only contained an IC for the horizontal phase-locked loop and one for the vertical deflection. All other signal processing and the timing chain was done with discreet transistors, mostly the cheapest. TO-92 NPN's we could buy inside the United States at that time. Integrated circuits? Who need 'em?

 

...and fahnestock clips!

 

I never did use a breadboard. I built my first single valve, battery powered, reflex, super regenerative radio on an inverted rectangular tobacco tin. It was so successful that made a mains power supply for it on another tin and plugged them together. Then I built a twin pentode output stage on a third tin to drive a speaker. The components were mounted on terminal strips and I soldered everything with a tinsmith's soldering iron heated on the gas stove.That was in 1950.
Looking back on it, I am amazed that I got it to work!
It was on my bedroom window sill. Three chassis plugged together, with no cabinet, One hot evening a wasp flew in the window and landed on the copper oxide high voltage rectifier. It went ZZZZZAP. I guess I invented one of the first electronic bug killers!

 

I guess I invented one of the first electronic bug killers

Opportunity missed.

 

The hallowed cigar box... The funny thing was that a box of 50 Panatelas cost about the same as a small hammertone grey aluminum mini box (USA) back in the day. Buy the cigars then enjoy the box later! I also enclosed some projects in cigar boxes.

 

My first breadboard was a bunch of those red Radio Shack transistor sockets pushed into holes punched into a sheet of cardboard, with different combinations of connections wired on the back.

Then I got my first "real" trainer lab from Bell & Howell.

 

I remember transistor sockets. Much like tube sockets, but transistors don't have the wear mechanisms that tubed had. Has anyone here take an bag of transistors down their grocery store and tested their transistors to find a defective one (I have)?

 

I remember transistor sockets. Much like tube sockets, but transistors don't have the wear mechanisms that tubed had. Has anyone here take an bag of transistors down their grocery store and tested their transistors to find a defective one (I have)?

We had a Skaggs or Safeway back in the Day. I was tasked to take the tubes down and test them, I always wondered how does this and that work? If this then that discovery, experientially needing an expert to tell me, I had no idea the path or undertaking was so deep, trying my best here and there to obtain knowledge even if just a snippet electronics could offer me. So I stopped wondering since no one knew about it, the TV repair guy helped my mother and she told me the basics, one of which was never to touch the Tube itself always the base. After that just knowing the number matching them and then do the function test.

Still today I find Tube Technology so interesting, actually I find them artistic in a way, I never was able to find a bad tube lol

Back then or in the Wayback Machine, simpler times, I remember the Manhattan style Boards artistic, it’s why I purchase some copper clad boards with the intention of warehousing my Plasma Speaker Design I found on the Net, my intention was clear plastic, visible components and output stage all viewable. I crashed a power supply doing a 7 hr test on the circuit, just to see if the flyback I used would cook or components, looking for defects in the circuit. I may revisit that some day or not. To many projects on my plate to go back to that One. 2 websites, one a business site the other just for fun. Ramping up momentum on my Retirement Business at the moment.

Thank you for the memories, I also had the virtue of a Plant near my house, they manufactured the mighty ’555’ I was amazed at the cooling towers and refrigeration units outside, often wondering how that facility worked. Now looking back and knowing what they were doing then, that wonder terminated in a TV repair shop I managed for 10 years part-time. Then ran by myself for a 1 year until I was able to get a job R&D for a large Shooting Range Company. That was the antithesis of my career as a Tech, I loved it, I mean common “Guns” while working side by side with electronic design engineers. It never does amaze me though, how many of you have played a crucial role in the development of the electronic industry and computer technologies, an army of engineers each working on separate isolated often unknowingly contributing to our industries today.

I’m glad to have seen Airplanes, Rockets, Satellites, to know it spawned from creative minds like those on this site, I bow, thank you for my journey.

kv

Edit: I was born in the year “Sputnik 1” I still look into the sky now and then.

 

Edit: I was born in the year “Sputnik 1” I still look into the sky now and then.

Although born early the following year, my pre-natal nickname was 'Sputnik'.

My first few crystal sets c1965 were built on a wooden baseboard and copper-plated 'hardboard' pins; components were soldered on with a 'leading' soldering iron heated with a blow torch (apparently called that because it was used for lead roof repairs and car-body 'leading'). Plumbers solder stick and a tin of rosin flux. Its what my Dad had in his 'shed' and we didn't know any better!

I got a 25W 'Antex' soldering iron for my 9th birthday! - apart from mine being red handled doesn't look like the design has changed much in 55 years!

 

I still have some transistor sockets and metal hat transistor. Modern Breadboards are so much easier than vector board which was better than terminal strips. Not what we call a terminal strip today but these!

And these aren't quite what we used. They were right angled and bolted to the chassis with larger soldering lugs on them. Could be 1 lug or several ganged together. I still have the tools and wire but never really got into the wire wrap business.

 

I still have some transistor sockets and metal hat transistor. Modern Breadboards are so much easier than vector board which was better than terminal strips. Not what we call a terminal strip today but these!
View attachment 260725
And these aren't quite what we used. They were right angled and bolted to the chassis with larger soldering lugs on them. Could be 1 lug or several ganged together. I still have the tools and wire but never really got into the wire wrap business.

A variety of these, ubiquitous in the hollow state gear I learned on as a kid.

​

 

Yep, every Muntz TV I ever tore apart had those.

 

Same with me Yaakov.
My very first circuit that I built and that actually worked, was a five tube mono amplifier. I used those exact terminals too, and point to point wiring.

 

Anybody remember these ..........
This is what I got for Christmas when I was 7-Years old .
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and wound-up working here as an assistant to the Engineer at age of 16.
The Engineer was actually a High-School genius friend who was 15 at the time !!!!
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And yes, the Tower was only ~100-yards behind the building !!

 

I built the Knight Kit version (Regen). After a couple years I became bored with it and used the punched chassis and power supply to make an HF grid modulated AM transmitter just as my high school electronics class was learning about modulation. The teacher, an old Ham radio operator and ARRL Director of the Pacific never taught transistor circuits. I ended up teaching an after-school session on JFETS which he monitored. I guess I was pretty full of myself.

 

Hello,

I have started with electronics using the EE series from Philips.
They where wooden boards with holes and springs to hold the parts:

The cards showed where the parts should be and where to use wires.
http://www.hansotten.com/electronic-kits/ee-series/ee100x/

Bertus

 

Same here. Philips EE kit got me started. Good ol’ OC44, OC45, OC71, OC72.

 

Anybody remember these ..........
This is what I got for Christmas when I was 7-Years old .
.
.
View attachment 260788

Wow, and I was only making xtal sets!

That thing is lethal - on/off switch on the ground side! no mains isolation!

Same here. Philips EE kit got me started. Good ol’ OC44, OC45, OC71, OC72.

I lusted after one of those - well the Philips Radionics X-series (which pre-dated the EE series) when my (then) best friend got one for his birthday. My parents couldn't afford one so I started with a crystal set based on something in a Boy's Own book from the library. We then went to Frank Mozer's electronics emporium in Edmonton, NE London to buy the bits and the rest, as they say, is history. That was the start of a hobby and a career lasting 56y so far and still going...

I got my Philips Radionics kit eventually. I bought a perfect near-unused one at a toy auction when in my late-20s. My kids were, sadly, not interested, but my 8y old grand-daughter loves it and now has her own Hot Wires set...

Edit: to clarify which Philips set...

 

I have started with electronics using the EE series from Philips.

Same here, got it when I was about 8 - I still have a few odds and ends from it in my junk collection - can't bring myself to throw them out!

 

When I was in my 20's a got hold of those spring clips and a piece of pegboard. I sold the lot at a ham flea market. Now I wish I had kept them.