I suppose my initial exposure to all this when my dad strung up a long wire in the garden and got me interested in the crystal set he made before the war.
It was built on an ebonite baseboard, had four binding posts for aerial, earth and the "BBC" headphones,
and had a beautiful variometer, exactly like this
It originally must have had a galena & "cats whisker" detector because the holder was sill present but by the time I saw it, an early crystal diode was wired across the holder, almost certainly a Sylvania 1N34A like this
The diode used to fascinate me and I thought if the station was strong enough it would light up like a bulb. I must have been five years old.