Signs That A Child Is Going To Be An Engineer - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2017, 11:31:41 pm
content: I want to create a good long list for this so I am going to contribute a few and see where this goes.1. The kid has, without asking permission, disassembled a large appliance just to see "how it works". Extra points for getting it back together again.2. Not content with owning two "How Things Work"-type books, he has just bought a third.3. Without being induced by an adult, has taught himself how to program a computer with a general purpose programming language.Here's a personal one:4. Not being content just to fly model rockets, has taken his sister's Barbie car, turned it into a tank by building a new shell on it, and added a two-stage Estes rocket system (two C-5-0s) to propel it down the street at about 30 miles an hour (age 10 for that I think, good times).Please add your own personal experiences.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2017, 11:40:26 pm
content: When I was four (1967), I disassembled large parts of Dad's brand new Masport lawn mower. I got it all back together again, except for the starter recoil spring. Oops! (Dad managed to fix it up)At seven (1970) I was building things with batteries, wires, lamps, switches. Figured out how to use 2 DPDT switches so that either one could turn a lamp on or off -- and then figured out how to use an arbitrary number of them. At nine (1972), over the winter season I "borrowed" all the relays from the cow milking shed control box, made good use of them, and put them back before calving in spring. I mentioned this to Dad recently -- he was shocked and said he was very glad he didn't know that then. At ten (1973) I was allowed to skip school classes and use the school caretaker's workshop to design and make a control system for flashing lights on a "flying saucer" for the school end of year play. I used a bit of broom handle, stuck drawing pins into it, joined by wires, and rigged up variable-speed reversable control for it using a Hornby model railway controller (big rheostat, possibly identical to the one below) to an electric motor, using an old alarm clock as reduction gearbox and plastic ballpoint pen ink tubes as connecting shafts (press fit over metal stub shafts). Springy metal leaves pressed against the rotating broom handle, completing the circuit to various lamps. At about the same time I repaired my grandparents' radiogram by the simple technique of noticing that one of the tubes wasn't glowing and taking it to a shop to get one the same.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2017, 11:46:40 pm
content: Your 10 year old kid turned a barbie car into a tank and sped it down the street @30 MPH with rockets?I'm 15, taking a Calc 2 course in college with ATM straight 100s on tests, but I think I've been beat.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2017, 06:05:27 am
content: I don't think there are any general signs. Can't speak for sure about Dad, the engineer, but all anyone talks about in the family about his childhood years is hunting, shooting and exploring. I played with Erector sets and blocks, and took many things apart, put far fewer together (once I understood how they worked I wasn't interested anymore). Both sons are engineers. Both built things and took them apart, but it took one years to learn that solder was not as good as bailing wire for holding things together, and the other was more interested in band than anything mechanical.I was a Boy Scout leader for years, and watched several boys grow up to be engineers. Some showed the signs, but others showed no interest what so ever in technical or mechanical things until they reached their college years.

author: onlooker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2017, 11:20:57 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on March 28, 2017, 11:46:40 pmGood for you, but what is "ATM"? Something like Mathcounts or AMC8/10/12? I guess you should be ranking well in Mathcounts or AMC.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 12:09:50 am
content: It means at the moment.

author: raspberrypi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 01:38:45 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on March 30, 2017, 12:09:50 amAuvtomat Tellurium manufacturer.

author: gnif
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 02:15:11 am
content: Quote from: raspberrypi on March 30, 2017, 01:38:45 amAutomated Teller Machine

author: noidea
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 04:44:53 am
content: The force is strong with this one....14 months old and one of her favourite toys is my multimeter! :-0

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 04:58:37 am
content: Quote from: JoeN on March 28, 2017, 11:31:41 pmPretty much spot on...1) Yup ... I'm still amazed everything included all those "Extra" parts through....2) Yup ... All of the "Big book of tell me why" series...3) Yup ... VB6 counts... but just barely...4) Yup ... It was my own remote control car... the one with the built in nerf launcher that I re-purposed to ignite the engine... It didn't work very well through... nowhere near 30mph.... even after tripling the engines.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 05:28:42 am
content: As a kid, a question I would often ask myself about a toy or object is "I wonder how much volts this can take". My mom probably wondered why I always asked for 9 volt batteries when I saw them at the check out at a store, because none of my toys took those. Oh, they took them.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 02:21:46 pm
content: Boy Scout Jamboree is held at local arsenal that produces mortars and other neat things for the Army. At the tank exercise bivouac, complete with recent tread marks and mud. MY patrol decides that its two demos will be Model Rocketry and a lashed 20 foot tower, no nails.Ten or so Army ordinance officers are walking up the muddy hill to the field in pristine dress uniforms, ready to judge the presentations. Large model rocket "Big Bertha" launches out of our site, noses over at about 50 feet and heads a half mile down range with a serious hissing whoosh! It had rained for hours the night before. Hear Army shout "cover, cover" and dive left and right into deep mud... Said rocket might have just had a 14 year old's latest engine design in it... After Army is done retreating to don cammies, guess who's troop took first place...Home made image conversion night vision at 15, PID Loops controlling the Hene Laser scanner at 16, and the TRS-80 controlled the Christmas lights one year...Biked fourteen miles round trip way to the University science library in the summers, librarians noted very quiet, way underage, very polite student tearing through EE journals and photocopying circuits to build. Chief Librarian arranges unheard of "Guest Card" for said kid... Tells me she'll see me there in a few years. I attend her retirement as a permanent Staff member in College of Engineering... Go figure..A certain religious group in the US known for proselytizing door to door is visiting the house in the summer. I come upstairs in full protective gear at age 14 or so to tell Mom to ignore the large bang that is incoming shortly. Leader of said group says "What a wonderful, polite, child, telling you he is about to do that." Then hastily retreats with his group at about Mach One, out the front door. The large balloon goes up, literally, right about the time they reach the mailbox. It was not malicious, I just would not let anything get in the way of the Saturday afternoon experiment schedule. Look on their face, priceless. Those City Dwellers just were not prepared for country life. Hope God forgives me for the shock waves..* Note for the powers that be, at "Homelab InSecurity"(tm), Energetic materials went out of my life a long time ago. Getting paid to make lab equipment, maintain lasers, help graduate students, and to create active Nanomaterials for wound healing is a lot more fun.Steve

author: W2NAP
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 05:37:55 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on March 30, 2017, 05:28:42 amoh man, I had one of them ride in cars as a kid about 5 or 6 years old. (it was a chev monte painted in earnardts blue and yellow wranger colors) it took a 6v brick battery.. i changed the 6v out for 2 12v car batteries.. it worked and despite the added weight it was fast. but it was hard to control and ended up wrecked

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 05:49:46 pm
content: Quote from: LaserSteve on March 30, 2017, 02:21:46 pmI don't suppose there happened to be an oxy/acetylene welder on the premises?I made some rather large bangs in my yoof by setting a slightly oxygen flame, extinguishing it and filling a balloon or plastic bag. I set one off with a length of firecracker fuse, but after surviving that the rest were triggered with a .22 from 100m away :-) :-) Rattled house windows 400 or 500 metres away.

author: TheWelly888
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 06:14:57 pm
content: My Dad was always working on the family car when I was a kid in the 1970s. I used to "help" him!I did learn a lot from him.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 10:37:29 pm
content: Quote from: TheWelly888 on March 30, 2017, 06:14:57 pmSame here. My Dad even made me a box to stand on so I could see. And I used to read all the old books he had, engine repair manuals and so forth dating back to the 50's, one was some sort of Army training manual.One of my favorite 'toys' was my box of lights, batteries, wires, and switches. Plus I did a lot of model train stuff. Other favorites were my Erector set and of course the huge box of Lego I had. I subscribed to Popular Electronics when I was 12, we sold magazines for a school fundraiser and I got one for myself. Prior to that I came across an old issue of Radio-Electronics at the white elephant table at some sort of school function in elementary school - it happened to feature the RCA 1801 Microtutor and the computer bug bit hard, I read that article over and over until I understood what it was talking about. SHortly thereafter the TRS-80 Model 1 came out and I became a fixture in the local Radio Shack store. The subscription to PE showed me a whole lot of other sorts of things I could do with electronics, and a guy down the street gave me a huge box full of parts and gadgets since he was moving and knew I was interested in that stuff. By the time I was 15 or so I knew I wanted to be an EE - I loved messing around with computers and I had quite a collection, but I knew computer science wasn't for me, I didn't much care for the theory and design of programming algorithms, I just had fun writing programs that did things I wanted. A visit to Bell Labs (right after the breakup - one of the presenters jokingly told us all to ignore the Bell logo on all the slides) plus an engineering day at a local university (the one I ended up attending) solidified my desire to go for EE, not CompE or CompSci. So looking back, it was pretty apparent that I was going to be an engineer. Oh yeah, in those in between years I also built a bunch of things, mostly of wood. I had a broken wagon, I made a frame of 2x4's and some plywood and bolted the wheels from the wagon to it. I took a set of old metal roller skates, and made a cross-shaped platform (one bold where the crosspiece went, this is how it was steered) with the idea to put a sail of some sort on it. I had a somewhat crappy go-kart chassis my Dad got from one of his co-workers but never got around to doing anything with - so basically a push car - that I DID erect a sale on using tent poles. If there was a decent wind in the right direction it would push me up the hill in front of my house, then I could take the sale down and coast down the hill.So yeah, once an engineering nerd, always an engineering nerd.

author: calexanian
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 11:25:06 pm
content: Quote from: Brumby on March 29, 2017, 06:08:06 amI remember when that came out. Could not stop laughing. So true though.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 12:12:14 am
content: When I was 4 or 5 my mom used to take me to her office. They had a HP/UX time sharing system back then - a floor sample of what they were selling - that I can play with. They decided to pull out an 286 PC and put Xenix on it so it can be used as a terminal for the HP/UX box, hooked up a null modem and man it was fun with UNIX and some X graphics on EGA. I got my first computer later but it ran Windows 95. I later got into Visual Basic when I was 7. EE came into play when I was 7 too, eager to learn why computer works.Maybe that is why I am nostalgic when I bought my MacBook Pro: all that familiar experiences with UNIX are coming back with macOS. It is a full blown UNIX too, just like Xenix and HP/UX.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 01:56:19 am
content: Quote from: LaserSteve on March 30, 2017, 02:21:46 pmGotta love a good librarian. By the way, never cross a university librarian, they have literally thousands of books that tell them how to plot their revenge...

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 06:57:02 am
content: All applied to me. Add in that I was called upon to 'fix' anything from lamps to VCRs.I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up a physicist.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 02:16:50 pm
content: With the terrorist hiding under every bed mentality today, what my friend and I did when we were in high school would certainly have had us imprisoned for life.He was much more interested in chemistry than I was, plus his Dad owned a plastics plant, so he had access to pretty much anything he wanted. That included all sorts of oxidizers, and pure alcohol, among other things. He also got into making his own gunpowder.It all came down to the day of the ultimate explosive device. There was an empty lot near my house, in between two roads, the modern highway and the old road. Now there are houses there, but at the time, it was a big open area, and it was full of dirt bike trails, including some jumps other kids had made by piling up dirt. Also old tires found their way there, often used as obstacles to jump over. So one day my friend comes over and he has this device he has made. The detonator portion is a wrapped up pile of his homemade gunpowder the size of a huge cigar - I don't smoke so I'm not sure what the really big ones are called. This was suspended by the fuse in a 2 liter plastic soda bottle. What he put in the bottle I don't remember but it was a fuel of some sort plus a strong oxidizer. Being unsure of how big an explosion this would be, he used a whole roll of fuse cord. We stacked 2 or 3 old tires in the middle of a large dirt area (away from the weeds and brush the covered much of the area) and put the bottle int he middle. Stretched out the fuse cord, lit it, and took off. We were out of the lot, across the road, and a block up towards my house when it finally detonated. I have never personally witnessed something that loud since. It echoed like crazy off all the houses in my neighborhood. We just kept walking and went back to my house. What I could not believe is that no one called the police or fire department. We hung out at my house for about an hour, then decided we should go back and make sure nothing was burning. As we approached the area, it looked like a black snow had fallen. Shredded rubber. No trace of the bottle was found. Also amazed that windows weren't blown out of the houses nearest this lot, probably putting the device in the middle of the pile of tires helped there. I couldn't believe it had literally shredded the tires.

author: Artlav
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 03:09:47 pm
content: Quote from: JoeN on March 28, 2017, 11:31:41 pmYeah, a BORROWED appliance.Without the "extra points" part...

author: SingedFingers
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 05:00:53 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on March 31, 2017, 02:16:50 pmSnap. Eventually, every time there was a loud bang in the town, I was asked if it was me who was responsible. Sometimes it was. We used to steal the stuff from the chemistry department. I suspect we were allowed to get away with it as the chem teacher was a pyromaniac as well and let us pour a whole gallon of creosote on the school bonfire as a joke. Poor sod who lit it disappeared in a fireball.When I say stole stuff, we stole fumic nitric acid, 10M HCl, caesium, large rolls magnesium tape, 100% pure ethanol etc.My 4 year old owns a Uni-T UT33A (no probes as that's asking for trouble) and regularly goes around "testing" things with it. She can also get both traces up on any scopes regardless of how they are currently set up, which is something my fellow students at university could barely manage.I've told my kids that they must never admit to knowing anything about computers if even they do that as a career. You are instantly everyone's best friend then, but only when they have a goat porn and crap infested death laptop from hell. Electrical engineers; no one knows what to get them to do I found in my short career as one.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 05:27:09 pm
content: The balloons may or may not have been filled with a glassblowing torch. I wanted to work with lasers, and back then you had to make lasers if you wanted one, not buy a diode.So with GE Lamp Research down the road, Dad, bless him, arranged for me to have some evening lessons with pyrex.Whole goal was a home made Argon Ion laser.The Engineers at Goodyear Aerospace saw to it, that any child, either management, or union member, had a world class Science Fair project and access to scraps. I had pounds of mil spec Rs and Cs, mostly 1% metal film and Tantalum. Back then there was no Internet, getting data books required a business card, and your success was directly proportional to whoever mentored you. I have to say, that taught me to read and think. Thanks Dad, Thanks GAC/Loral/Lockmart Department 584.I pass it on. I love mentoring high school kids for Intel ISEF, and I'm a senior judge for the regional science fair. Take s few hours of your life and pass on the skill set. My work lab is open to most kids who ask, and as a College, we offer quiet summer internships for high school kids. 9 thru 12 often fair quite well in a graduate lab settingOne kid I mentored sent me a subtle message a while back. The goverment powers that be called me, he was getting a security clearance. SIX years after his project, he put me down as a reference for a job at a National Lab. What a nice, suprising, way to say thanks.I of course told them to keep an eye on the rascal, but clear him....Steve

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2017, 09:46:52 pm
content: I agree, pass it on. Pay it forward. But it is a little harder today. Due to lurid news reports any older geek willing to have young kids visit his laboratory is instantly suspected of any number of perversions. Training an engineer is the least of the suspicions, but not really acceptable either. And heavens forbid, don't teach those little ones to do all the crazy stuff that you were lucky to survive when you were young and foolish. One of my most fortunate survivals was the phase where I got fascinated by explosive forming and welding of metals. In the interests of "safety", in some experiments instead of using actual explosives I played with ways of generating lots of really high pressure steam really quickly.

author: raspberrypi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 01:04:32 am
content: Can you even talk about "compressed air movements" you made as a kid? I'm always afraid to talk because the FedExs (key word changed) came to both my parents houses (over 100 miles apart to find me) when I was younger because I made a joke online. (you would be surprised that anyone would have taken it seriously, and seriously question the competency the people whos job it is to "keep us safe". Anyways I told everyone what was going on years before Sno den (key words changed) and everyone called me crazy and paranoid, now they call me right. Hmmmm. Why was that administration so concerned that we could all be found when we called 911 on our cell phones? Especially when they didn't give a fuck about anything/anyone else but oil profits. Learned alot by hooking up my cell phone to a CLA and putting it in a traveling sales persons car for two weeks.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 01:22:21 am
content: The world has changed. A lot. Or at least the US has changed, immensely, and not for the better. One of the best demonstrations of this is the 1973 film - Charley Varrick. In this film the protagonist walks into a hardware store and buys detonators and dynamite. Which was perfectly normal in most states at the time the film was being made (though this was already changing by the the release date). There are so many things about the movie that were normal at that time which just couldn't happen today. The airport scenes. The lack of surveillance.What I did when I was a kid was legal then. Stupid? Yeah, a lot of it. But legal. Now, much is illegal, and it has become much more dangerous to be different. And definitely inappropriate to mention actual recipes for what you did back then.

author: yuzuha
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 04:27:41 am
content: LOL this is great and funny, and spooky too.Let's see.... I took apart my alarm clock (wind up).Read all my dad's electronic books (mostly a wwII era DeVry electronics course).Had the patience to take a hack saw and saw lengthwise through the armature of a 1/2 hp drill press motor to see what was in it (not to mention baseballs, golf balls and the like).Then I started buying used chemistry books at GoodWill with my allowance and making my own fireworks at about age 8... naturally my warped sense of humor required that you light them with water.Borrowed my brother's train transformer in order to set off a series of underground explosives tests.Then I became the neighborhood TV repair person..... I could test all the tubes and fix tuner problems and give a pretty accurate estimate of what it would cost to fix.Got visited by the police when I was about 12 for all the bangs and booms and orange clouds drifting through the neighborhood.Blew up my locker in high school with nitrogen triiodide (didn't get me expelled... I was the assistant principal's pet), and made guncotton in AP chem. class.Managed to acquire about half the parts to build a nitrogen laser and a million volt Xray machine but wound up moving and never finished them.When I die they'll probably still have to call hazmat to dispose of my uranium and other chemicals I'd rather get into electronics more since it doesn't corrode the plumbing like chemistry does.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 04:37:59 am
content: My explosives experience was limited to the twopenny bungers I could buy over the counter (many years ago). I'm feeling a little underprivileged.These days in Sydney, you can't buy (or have in your possession) anything other than sparklers, unless you have a pyrotechnic licence.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 05:03:47 am
content: I've always found electronics more interesting than chemistry, so I think I'll pass.There were a couple of "interesting" experiments in high school chemistry lessons, but there was one event I never witnessed, but was intrigued by....Many years ago, while at the UNSW, I rocked up to a first year chemistry class and found my assigned place, but noticed something. The ceiling of the lab was a greyish vermiculite and directly above the bench where I stood was a near perfect circle of a much lighter colour. It had a few small splash spots extending past the circle, but it was perfectly positioned above the bench to be a target for an experiment that went volcanic.I then noticed there were bottles of Nitric, Suphuric and Hydrochloric acid - of notable strength - available for each location and I thought ... I can see them capable of some fun.I never asked anyone how that spot came to be - but I bet it would have caused some excitement at the time.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 07:06:56 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on April 01, 2017, 04:37:59 amUh, yeah, same thing in Illinois. Everyone ignores it. You should see what I have in my basement awaiting July 4th. Thank God for Indiana and Wisconsin.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 08:01:44 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 01, 2017, 07:27:16 amVery common at state borders where a state that bans fireworks borders one that does not. Illinois going into Indiana is the same way. People vote with their wallets and feet as well as with their ballots around here.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 08:17:47 am
content: My journey started at 3 years old, in the professional wood workshop of my grandfather. Since I was not tall enough I places a 3-legged stool on top of the workbench to reach the lamp above it. I then removed the light-bulb turned the switch on and stuck my finger in there on full purpose. Well, I stood no longer on the stool but fell to the concrete floor with a bang and ended up in the hospital.After that I could not be stopped, took almost anything apart that came my way.Far too many stories to list them all.My parents claimed early on, that I would be an engineer one day.

author: JanNousiainen
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2017, 10:11:57 am
content: Our boy, about 16 months old, likes to inspect my purchases like scopes and signal gens

author: Assafl
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2017, 11:44:39 am
content: When I was a kid (in the 70s) chemistry kits had all kinds of chemicals in them.Mine had some sort of stable cyanide crystals for some oxygen absorption experiment (or something like that) that had a lock tab (parents could take the lock tab away) and fierce labelling to not mix with Acid which would degenerate it to the Prussic Acid form - not a good experimentIt also forced you to blow some of the glassware. So titration would be from a stock pipe that we heated, rotated and slowly pulled to form a thin neck.And were it not kids who pulled the tubes out of the radio and replaced them? 100's of volts and all?And water towers we could climb (now they are all locked).Anyway, last week my almost 4 yo son asked to solder - so I showed him how to hold the Metcal and after 1 demonstration he soldered a piece of wire to a junk PCB.(BTW - he has full use of my real tools - except heavy stuff like hammers, and sharp cutters - the rest is his for the taking; One day he commandeered my screwdriver box and all of the Wihas and Weras and PB Swiss Ratchets. When I got it back - he had put his plastic play screwdrivers in with mine. They are still there.

author: A.Huggy
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2017, 02:56:51 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 01, 2017, 07:27:16 amWhen I was a kid my dad would take me to SC once a year to load up on fireworks. One time on July 4th, the police showed up. They had a look at our stash of fireworks, complemented us on our selection, and told us to carry on. No one cared as long as you were being safe.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 12:53:25 am
content: Quote from: Assafl on June 22, 1970, 02:16:38 pmSodium ferrocyanide. I remember that one.

author: Assafl
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 10:50:41 am
content: Oh yeah. The E535 anti-cake additive - do not mix with Acid labels....

author: Harb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 11:24:20 am
content: When I was 5 I used to spend a lot of time around the TV.......The difference was, while everyone else was watching what was on the tube, I was spending my time peering into the heat vent slots in the back....totally mesmerised by the glowing tubes in the back !The best birthday I can remember was my 6th when dad gave me a little tool set and that same TV which had died beyond repair.........I sat on the verandah dismatling that TV inspecting each and every part.......didn't really know what I was looking at, but I was having a ball checking it all out......Later in life I became a TV Broadcast Engineer, and I still think thats where it all started.

author: yuzuha
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 07:39:00 pm
content: Quote from: HighVoltage on April 01, 2017, 08:17:47 amLol I got my finger in the socket accidentally but not intentionally. What got me was I was on the back porch playing with two 225v photoflash batteries that my dad had wired in series and had those insulated alligator clips on each terminal. I accidentally touched the bare metal with each hand. Next thing I know is that I'm 6 feet away smacked up against the wall so hard it knocked the wind out of me, wondering how I got there. Loved playing with these things

author: Harb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2017, 12:44:34 am
content: I have had that many shocks over the years I feel good after having one now.....it must recharge me lol.My first experience though was sticking my finger into an empty fridge light socket when I was probably about 4 years old........back in the day if the bulb was out you had perfect access to the normal bayonet socket easy as.....and those 2 little brass things just had to be touched lol....The other time I remember like it was yesterday was when I found a piece of mains lead that was bared at one end and a plug on the other......what t do with this......well twist the ends together, hold it in you hand like it was a flower and turn it on of course......back in the day fuses were often replaced with bits of fencing wire and the like so what a wonderful display of sparks and smoke until the cable itself gave in under the current........boy its a wonder I lived as a kid.These day I am paranoid about mains and high voltage, which I deal with a lot now......no more planed fireworks for me anymore.

author: yuzuha
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2017, 10:27:54 am
content: Quote from: Harb on April 08, 2017, 12:44:34 amLOL it is a wonder any of us survived! When I was in 6th or 7th grade I took my allowance and bought a bunch of colored neon panel lamps, limiting resistors and DPDT toggle switches out of a Burnstein Applebee catalog. Then "borrowed" one of dad's sheets of peg board, some wire and the cord off an old table radio and wired up a rocket ship control panel so my brother and I could play space ship. Naked 120v wiring on the back... probably had my mother freaking out but we managed to fly a lot of moon missions without shocking ourselves!

author: tatus1969
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2017, 10:33:11 am
content: one of my sons... pure passion

author: yuzuha
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2017, 10:55:49 am
content: CUTE!Here is some nostalgia for you PDFs of old electronics catalogs all the way back to the 50s.http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Electronics_Catalogs.htmI used to hang out in the Olsen and Burnsteen Applebee catalogs... fair radio was cool too they had tons of surplus stuff like old radiation survey meters, military radios and who knows what.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 08, 2017, 04:06:05 pm
content: Great memories Yuhuza. I used to live in the Allied catalogues, but actually bought mostly from Lafayette and Olsen. A colleague grew up near the Olsen center, and visited their operations shortly before the end. They had bought NCRs leftover stock as they transitioned from mechanical to electronic cash registers and adding machines. There were literally acres of gears, belts, shafts and bearings. Too bad Olsen didn't last until the hobby robotics and CNC era took off.