What Was Your First Experience With 'Electrickery' & How Old Were You?

[camtechman]

For me, at the age of 8, I began to wonder how 'electrickery' worked and my late Father gave me an idiots guide on this.

Well, he aimed it at the right idiot and I was curious about the "Conductivity" he spoke about.

In our kitchen we had a two bar, electric fire and through the protective wire grill I gazed at the two glowing red heating elements and, for some reason my mind told me to see if a shilling coin would conduct electricity.

After I came round and the ambulance men had left, my Dad explained why poking a shilling coin through the front grill and touching it on one of the elements was not a good idea and how the human body was also a good conductor of electricity.

The bump on the back of my head, where I hit the kitchen sink healed up after a couple of days !

[Andrew2]

It's funny how the interest comes on. I think mine developed when I was about eight years old when one of my school projects was to build a model stage-set. I wanted mine to stand out from the rest so I installed a set of footlights along the front of the stage, each with its own Bacofoil reflector. Making the four random bulbs light with roughly equal brightness taught me a lot about series and parallel connections! There was one incident wich involved a 3v torch bulb across the mains. That ended with a huge bang and a shaken young lad!
After that it was bells and buzzers and then quickly onto crystal sets and transistors.

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
Again, when a small lad, I was curious about the elements of our ancient (even then) Berry Magicoal electric fire which was switched off & cold. The 'guard' was just four thin widely spaced bars so it was very easy for a lad to sit on the concrete floor and touch the element wire. One belt (and years) later I realised that it was switched on the neutral side!
At secondary school I learned all about 'live chassis' courtesy of an old Ekco console telly and a cast iron radiator.
Has it taught me to be more careful around electricity? No, not really.
Cheers, Pete (with blue sparks coming out of his ears!)

[vidjoman]

I was also about 8 when I built a small stage/theatre and decided I wanted to project adverts onto a screen. I used some tracing paper as the screen and a torch and sweet paper wrappers together with a magnifying glass and got them to work as back projection. By the time I was 12 I was repairing record players and a few radios (or should that be wireless sets) and started building my own record player with push pull 6V6 output valves coupled with 2 x 8" speakers taken from old radios was enough to get complaints from the neighbours. I found a good wood shop that was prepared to cut plywood to the plans I gave them and was able to build record players just like Dansettes etc. but with better amplifiers. Spent many a happy hour doing that. As I was quite good at it a local electronic parts shop asked me to build Jason amplifier and tuner kits for his customers who wanted one but felt unable to do it themselves. Must have done about 30 by the time I left school and went as an apprentice in a large engineering factory. That taught me many things as they had their own iron and brass foundries, wood and metal machining shops together with associated assembly units. Items ranged form a small part to heavy engineering. They manufactured almost every part they used and, of course, I went into the electrical engineering side. I made many one offs and prototypes especially when it involved electronics rather than just electrical work.
I recall that one morning as I was repairing a radio under the bench, I was aware of a pair of polished shoes and the bottom of some smart trousers standing beside me. I turned to see the firm's managing director standing there. I thought I was about to be shown the door but he asked if I was busy and could he bring his daughters record player in to be fixed. Word of my exploits had reached the top floor.
After that it was the radio/tv world and then into Hi-Fi and continued as a designer, builder and repairman until I retired. I still do repairs but mostly valve amplifiers from Jukeboxes. Many arrive in a very 'bodged' state and need a complete rebuild.

[Junk Box Nick]

It's very hazy and back in the mists of time but I think it was when the old fashioned screw in bulb Christmas lights were discarded. A single bulb holder had been cut and dad showed me that one of the bulbs would light up if I held the wires to a battery. I might have been about nine or ten.

I used those same bulb holders with torch bulbs to illuminate a model railway, running them off the spare terminals of the power controller. As said above I learned a bit about series and parallel connections through this.

I had a tidy of my many boxes of junk a few weeks ago and I still have some of those Christmas light bulb holders.

['LIVEWIRE?']

My first ,memories centre around 'how does a wireless work?' back when I was about 8 or 9
(early 1950s). Sometime later my father brought home part of an old (1920s) radio, built on wooden boards, with components wired together using solid core wire run straight between the various parts, to which they were attached via screw terminals. I guess it must have been a TRF of some sort. There were two large variable capacitors (perhaps I should say condensers!) and various transformers, etc. I dismantled it, without studying it too much. Later, the boards and all the parts were left behind in a house move almost 50 years ago. Wish I still had that 'wireless' now!!

[bobsterkent]

Its amazing what the effect of putting a scalectrix hand controller into the open holes of a 15 amp round pin socket and then squeezing the throttle had on me as a 7 year old!

[threeseven]

The very first thing I can remember associated with electrickery was inspired by a Ladybird book! Around 9 yo as an avid Matchbox car collector I decided to illuminate the shelves on which my collection was displayed. So, with help from the Ladybird book I plundered my savings to buy the materials needed. It all worked and to me looked fabulous but I was disappointed by the short time the battery lasted, and how expensive a new one was relative to the pocket money of a 9 yo!
Then I had a brainwave, use the power supply off my Scalextric! Only partially successful, due to the bulbs being 4.5v and the power unit giving about 15 volts off load, which as a novice I didn't realise! The display was impressively bright for while!
The family then moved to Northern Ireland due to my Fathers job and my electrical experimenting paused for a few years until we moved back to the UK.
It was then when I started messing with my fathers Hi-fi, much to his distress, and rapidly progressed on to anything electrical and electronic I could get my hands on.

I got a Lego lighting up brick for my 4th birthday (or was it 5th), mum said "I'll be back after making a cup of tea and wire it up for you", by the time mum returned the brick was alight.

[mole42uk]

When I was about 10 a family friend, ex-RAF type who was interested in radio, went off to Africa to fly aeroplanes and donated his huge collection of ex-military radio gear to me. There were boxes and boxes of components and stuff, so I had lots of early 'trial and error' experiences.

I had my granddad's old TV in my bedroom when I was about 6 - I don't know why I got it, that would have been in 1960/61 and I suspect that TVs at that date were new enough to be repaired rather than junked, but the back of that was quite easy for me to remove!

Richard

[Peter.N.]

I also must have been about 8 when a friend of my dads gave me an old radio chassis which fascinated me. I pestered a local radio engineer for the bits to make a crystal set and tried every sort of configuration including variometers. I then progressed to proper radios and before I left school to TV. I completed a part built Denco TV kit from which I learnt a lot. When I left school at 15 I went straight into the radio/TV trade and stayed there for all my working life.

Peter

[Kala_12]

My father was in to diy including electronics. When I was about 6 or 7, I remember building a simple crystal set, hand winding the coil on a cardboard tube (bottom part of a tube of something - can't remember what) and using a pair of high impedance headphones. A bit later, dad and I decided to build a better tuner and amplifier for the radio-gram. It was a mono setup, in fact I think stereo records were not at all common if in fact they were available at all. I was able to explain how electronic valves worked to our teacher in physics at secondary school! I built my first disco consol/mixer and used a commercial 30W amp, then progressed to stereo mixer with two home built amps from a circuit in Practical Wireless.
I have just loved tinkering and the satisfaction of fixing things. I don't know of anyone who was interested in 'electrickery' early in life and is not still interested!
Stuart.

[dryad1313]

I started off at the age of about 5 when a TV engineer called round to fix our Bush TV166u set. I was absolutely fascinated and even remember which component he replaced (a section on the dropper resistor). He also replaced a couple of valves and I was allowed to keep the old ones. From there I was given an old radio to take apart and there was no going back. At the age of 7 I was given a Radionic kit from which I built a transistor radio (with help from my father), and not content with that I was bought the ladybird book titled "How to Make a Transistor Radio". I built one exactly as it looked in the book but could only ever get Radio 1 - not the best of designs if I remember correctly. From there I built Hi-Fi amps as well as valve guitar amps, guitar effects pedals, computer add-ons for my ZX81 and Spectrum, and was always being asked to fix other people's electronic equipment.

Today I feel I have travelled a full circle; a few months ago my mother passed away and I was responsible for clearing her house, and knowing she was a real hoarder I knew that she threw very little away - including the Bush TV166u set that started it off for me! Literally this very morning, having spent a couple of days replacing caps etc., I got it working. The repair the TV man made back in 1969 is still there and working fine.

[ThePillenwerfer]

I honestly can't remember when I wasn't interested, I could certainly put a plug on before I started school, something my Dad could never do.

I was more interested in electrical, as opposed to electronic, things until I was in my twenties and have only been dealing with valves for about three years.

- Joe

[sp10mk11]

Well mine was due to my spiteful sister (then) she told me to touch the end of an electric fire heating element, first shock at the age of about 7, closely followed by me deciding to paint the light bulb in my bedside light with water paints until it exploded (yes it was on)

[Ed_Dinning]

Possibly because I am the 5 generation Engineer in my family and my son is the 6th, I was given old plugs and sockets to play with at the age of 2. It certainly improved my mechanical dexterity and led on to "wiring" things onto the side of my little stool/seat. Later on came the Boy Electrician and other books.
Father had warned me well about the dangers of the mains so I didn't get a real bite until about the age of 9 from a voltage doubler power supply.

Ed

[evingar]

No tradition of engineering of any stripe in my immediate family. No idea what first "switched me on" to electricity and electronics, but I can remember at a very early age (maybe 7 or 8) playing about with batteries and bulbs and reading a book called "How it works and how it's done" by Ellison Hawks - still got it !

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WORKS-AND-...item417fb5719e

No idea where the book came from, unlikely that my father would have been interested in it - Someone probably picked it up at a jumble sale for me. It has a chapter in it called "The Wonders of Wireless" , that amongst other things gave a very understandable explanation of how radio receivers and valves works.

A bit later on I started picking up old tellys and radios from jumble sales. The prime reason was to get something that worked for the bedroom - it being virtually unheard of for a pre teen to have a telly in their bedroom in the early 70s.

Success was very limited at first and most "acquisitions" ended up as a collection of components - of course all the stuff was valve era as that was what ended up as jumble at that time.

My first reliable "worker" was a KB dual standard monochrome set - I must have been about 13 (1975) - that had a mains dropper fault that I fixed. Worked for a number of years.

[greenstar]

I was a toddler, maybe three years, and with my Granny. I found a broken miniature radio valve in the gutter - no glass, it had been run over. I was totally fascinated, and my granny, bless her, let me keep it. From that time the interest was a little intermittent - this was the late 50's - as my parents weren't too keen on my messing with glass valves and electricity, and my dad, an electrical engineer, wanted to encourage me to get in to transistors. I just wasn't attracted to them, although I did have one of those kits which connected with little springs, and I made things that worked. But I was poking about in mains sets, with very little knowledge, when i started secondary school. I survived! I used to pick up sets from the repair shops, for free, on the way home from school, and smuggle them into the shed. I had to clear out everything when I went to Uni, and the interest lapsed. I had a whole succession of telly's, including the classic Bush bakelite set, eventually sold.
Tony

[kalee20]

Probably about 4, my parents had bought a dolls' house to see if I would play with it... And a doll that cried "Lulu" when you pulled a string. The doll was super - I wanted to find out how it worked, but I was too young to understand. The dolls' house not so good, till my dad started fitting lights inside the rooms, with MES battenholders, a switch, and a 1289 battery... It was great! And to this day I love putting little lights on my projects.

[mole42uk]

Originally Posted by greenstar

I did have one of those kits which connected with little springs, and I made things that worked.

I had one of those! What company made them? I remember making mine into a portable radio that just fitted into the pocket of my school blazer.

Richard