quick note

[kinzel]

Hey, remember the days of amateurs building radios and .... coming up with neat stuff like personal computers that finally reached the mainstream?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/21/AR2008072101947.html

Comments

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Um. I built a radio.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Hum? Our local supermarket here in Japan has 2 Gigabyte microSD (I think that's the right type -- the tiny ones that go in cell phones) for $15 right now. It caught my eye the other day because I think it's the cheapest I've seen, and it was in a place that I don't expect to be buying cheap electronics. It also didn't seem to be a special sale -- they had just added a rack beside the batteries and other gadgetry.

So I think the notion of a 4GB hard drive may be a bit tiny?

But it is interesting.

And yeah, I built a crystal radio, modem, H19 terminal, this and that . . . didn't everyone?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Sounds simpler than my 12-tube double-conversion superheterodyne ham receiver . . .

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thanks for the link!

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

It really was not a normal thing for a 10 year old girl to do in the 1950's.

I don't think I knew anyone else of either gender who did things like that until I was an adult.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, the modem and terminal were in my 20s. The crystal radio, homemade gunpowder, hand-wound electromagnet (running off a model train transformer, as I recollect, so I could adjust the power), and other stuff was pre-teens and teens (60s). And I read Popular Mechanic and such whenever I could get my hands on them. Most of that stuff you could do yourself, and it was fun, too.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Aha! You're saying you built a radio in the 50s? A girl? Cool. And you're right, that was pretty unusual. I still remember in about 7th grade taking shop class -- all guys. Then somewhere in there I took the cooking class (home economics? something like that) and caused a ruckus -- first my parents had to argue with the school to get them to let me take it, and then it turned out that's where all the girls were! I enjoyed it. I think I missed the Future Farmer's class or something because I took it, but at least I learned how to cook. And I never wanted to be a farmer, anyway.