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Old 7th Nov 2020, 3:40 pm   #61
FireballX
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Default Re: Ridiculous thoughts and ideas from a young age

We had an old radiogram that was passed down to me when it fell out of favour with the older members of the family and which I’d installed in my bedroom. Cassette recorders had just become a thing and I had saved up my pocket money for weeks in order to buy one from a relative’s catalogue. Must have been late 60s or very early 70s.

Not long after it arrived, I thought how great it would be if I could record to the cassette directly from the radiogram rather than having to use its rather disappointing built-in microphone (and having to maintain a deadly silence in the room, which I never found easy).

Looking around the rear of the radiogram, I spotted two unlabelled circular sockets on the chassis which I took to be either line-in or line-out. Thinking that even if they were line-in, it couldn’t hurt to try, I fabricated a lead to connect these sockets to the microphone input socket on the side of the cassette. I plugged everything in - powering the cassette from the mains as usual - pressed “record” on the cassette recorder and switched on the radiogram.

The loud bang from the cassette recorder (I’m sure it jumped clear off the ground) heralded me diving across the room to yank out the plug from the wall socket. Cue burning smell from the cassette recorder which now had a nasty black burn mark radiating from one side and appeared quite dead. The radiogram meantime, was still playing merrily from its radio as if nothing had happened.

I was very young, but even so reasoned that the sockets must have somehow sent power (a lot of it), not audio, into the cassette recorder and had fried it. I was pretty upset with my stupidity. The one ray of consolation was that I discovered later the cassette could still work fully, but only on batteries - whatever had happened had just destroyed the mains power option. Batteries weren’t cheap though, and I bitterly regretted my little experiment for months!

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Old 7th Nov 2020, 5:10 pm   #62
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As a child I made up night lights that impressed my cousins using the little screw in bulb holders and a battery that I'd added to sme meccano. Even though you switched "off" by disconnecting a wire I hadn't really grasped that a "switch" was a purely mechanical device... having not yet had one to play with or examine! I observed however that shorting out the battery terminals did extinguish the light but I couldn't really connect that action with the magical device on the wall and thought "that can't be it". Instinctively I did realise that shorting out the battery wasn't good for it. I can't remember when the penny finally dropped

I didn't go in for explosive antics until Secondary School with my friend Malcolm McGregor [AKA Rocket Man] and our Gunpowder factory. This powered bake bean tin rockets, as many as half a dozen soldered together. Despite a good steady thrust, they never got more than two or three feet of the ground as the solder melted and they fell apart. We observed all the correct safety procedures and electrically ignited the fuel from a good distance using a hot element. Sadly though, our "Atlas" missiles became "Hopeless!"

Back in infancy I was given my Gran's 20's Radio which interested and frustrated me a great deal as I had no information to go on or understand how it worked. I remember painting the valves white. This may have been because one of the very few US serials on TV was a Spy Story involving a Linear Accelerator and "Agents" talking into cell phone type hand held devices. I made one of these by modifying a square old metal cigarette case [possibly now white] found in the rubbish. I "suspect" the white valve idea was an attempt to make something futuristic looking-shades of "Things To Come" the H G Wells based film [1936]. Many years later, I was offered a job [effectively machine minding] in a workshop at Manchester University were they were testing out early prototypes of huge coils for this new fangled Cerne Project! "I'm not sure what it is but I think it might be big "said the Prof Boss".

A lot of the mis-spellings, mentioned earlier, may indeed be by association as described. I was very surprised to discover on here one day that "wanderer plugs" were actually wander! I "wondered" how I'd been confused all these years but a very popular song in my childhood was "The Happy Wanderer". On the other hand it may be mild Dyslexia. I was the best reader in my class at 6 years or so but [aloud] one day "The Giant came over the horizon" [in my head] came out as "The Gaint came over the horrizan!" I always had trouble spelling Giant and with why jail and goal could mean the same thing? Mind you, they do say that that there is a higher proportion of this sort of difficulty among the very intelligent Buckminster Fuller struggled until he was four when it was found that he could only see blurry coloured shapes-possibly looking like Geodisic Domes! A bit OT perhaps but "see" Wednesday's The Disordered Eye BBC4. Great Art from impaired vision. I-Player.

Dave W

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Old 8th Nov 2020, 5:15 am   #63
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I read somewhere when 9 or so that a transistor could be used as a switch - so I expended a weeks pocket money (2/6d) on a white spot transistor put a 6v screw type bulb holder to the emitter, a 100ohm resisitor and switch to the base and a 10 ohm resistor to the collector (only resisitors I had at the time) - then I put a big 9volt battery across it. When I flicked the switch to the base the light lit for a brief moment, then the transistor got very hot and the light went out. Would not come on again no matter what I did.
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Old 8th Nov 2020, 8:38 am   #64
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I vaguely remember trying to make a transistor from a pair of diodes and trying to be very scientific in taking voltage and current readings to see if it worked, even a little.

It didn't of course.
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Old 8th Nov 2020, 10:45 am   #65
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I remember demonstrating to my Dad (who was an electrician) that it didn't make any difference whether you connect a switch in series or parallel with a bulb - it still operated as an on/off switch.

That's when he understood why he'd found lots of his batteries had mysteriously gone flat!
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Old 8th Nov 2020, 1:29 pm   #66
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Several people have mentioned experiments with train sets - no wonder, they were (and still are) ideal 'closed circuit' environments for experiments with control.

Aged around 9-10 I got a cheap low end radio-cassette recorder as a Christmas present one year - I enjoyed it for what it was but I discovered that if I played a tone into the aux-in while in record mode it came out of the speaker. At that point, a light bulb went on in my head and I connected a bridge rectifier + capacitor followed by a relay to the 'ear' output and found that with the recorder playing this tone and volume turned up past a certain point the relay would turn on.

Next step, I routed the power for the train track through the relay, and with it all connected up, started recording: Turned on the tone, away went the train, and after it had gone twice through the station I turned off the tone, the train stopped, I waited about 10 seconds for the 'passengers' to get on and off and then started the tone again, etc.

Once I'd finished 'programming' the train like this I could park the train back at the starting point, rewind and start the tape playing and the train would magically repeat the runs I had 'programmed', although not with great accuracy as the train did not run at a perfectly constant speed so sometimes it stopped slightly short of the station and other times it overshot a little. Still, I was quite 'chuffed'.

This was before I ever got my hands on a microprocessor or a computer.
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Old 8th Nov 2020, 2:11 pm   #67
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Taking two pairs of wires from a single cell and thinking if I put them in series...
 
Old 8th Nov 2020, 8:17 pm   #68
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I'm very encouraged that it wasn't just me shorting out batteries. I was really delighted when I got my electric train set to run again by the simple expedient of cleaning the Hornby [3 rail] track with some sandpaper! The remote Rocket Launch system we employed to ignite the gun powder via a hot element [fuse wire I think] was powered from the 12v (auxillary) terminals of a train controller. One of the Hornby Grey cast iron jobs that lit up a red bulb with a satisfying buzzing noise if the track was shorted!

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Old 8th Nov 2020, 8:20 pm   #69
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Default Re: Ridiculous thoughts and ideas from a young age

A was the variable dc, B was the fixed dc and C was plain 15V ac.
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Old 8th Nov 2020, 8:38 pm   #70
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That's right Robin. On reflection I think we used C, the AC outlet The electrics and the fuel were a big success [unlike the rocket itself]. Once we spent a week building a huge pile of very fine gunpowder. We used to ignite a sample as we went along and eventually could judge when it was optimum acceleration quality! You've guessed it-eventually the whole lot went up from a stray spark. There was no real danger as it was loose in a container on the shed bench, not restrained in any way-fortunately. The overall effect was more like when a Pantomime villain emerges from a trap door in the stage. After all those hours with a Pestle and Mortar we didn't make that mistake again and put smaller amounts in separate cells as the professionals do!

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Old 8th Nov 2020, 8:46 pm   #71
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Default Re: Ridiculous thoughts and ideas from a young age

I also remember making "Electric Sparklers" by wrapping steel wool [my mom's Brillo-pads were somehow always going missing] around a couple of battery-carbons then connecting them across a big battery.

Remembering the old camera flash-bulbs with a wire-wool (Magnesium as I now know) filling I tried energizing the carbons-and-steel-wool thing from 240V. There was quite a bang when I flicked the switch on the 13A socket. The plug-fuse blew, but did not save the socket-switch from welding its contacts together permanently.

Reading somewhere about 'Thermite' I spent ages filing-down some aluminium pipe and collecting the filings. But I'd mistaken the chemistry involved and was disappointed to find that steel-wool and aluminium filings didn't do anything when electrically-energized.

Yes, we all did dangerous things back then - but we all seem to have miraculously survived!
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Old 8th Nov 2020, 8:58 pm   #72
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One day, when I was a child, my Dad brought home some items from a clearout at his office (the company was relocating and disposing of surplus items.) One of the things was a Grundig Stenorette reel-to-reel tape recorder, intended for dictation, but my Dad gave it to me to play with. I had a lot of entertainment from it, recording songs off the radio by holding the microphone next to the speaker. I tried recording television sound in the same way, but the recordings usually had an irritatiing buzzing noise on them. At the time I could never understand why. I assumed the tape recorder had an intermittent fault which only showed up when recording from the TV downstairs. Years later, I learned it was due to the dynamic microphone picking up the timebase signals from the TV. Eventually the tape recorder stopped working altogether and I took it to bits.

The other item I was given was a grey office wall clock made by Gent of Leicester. It was an electromechanical type powered by a D-size (SP2) torch battery. A lever on the back had to be moved, then released quickly to start the mechanism, which would then keep ticking away. It worked until the battery ran out. However, at school, there was an identical-looking Gent clock, but it was mains powered. Naturally I thought "Why not power my clock from the mains, instead of buying batteries?" So you can probably guess what I did next. I cut the mains lead off an old table lamp, stripped the wires and twisted them onto the clock's battery terminals. I plugged it into the mains ... and it went B A N G !

I hadn't realised that the school's clock had a different movement designed for mains power. I unplugged the unfortunate clock, which was still smoking after the explosion, and took it to the bathroom where I smothered it with a damp flannel to stop the smoke. After that, it was dismantled and put in the dustbin. Strangely, I saw the dustman pulling out the clock's aluminium dial and bezel from the rubbish when he emptied the bin. I guess it had some scrap value.

After that incident, my Dad bought me a Readers' Digest book on repairing household electrical appliances, with an emphasis on safety. That book was my bedtime reading. I learned quite a lot from it. It certainly set me on course for repairing electrical / electronic items in the future.
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 1:00 am   #73
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Hi dangerous things we all have done before h and s school science project a container of Mercury and an iron wire this made a simple motor but not verry impresive so increased voltage made said wire glow red hot until container cracked resault a silvery mess
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 8:14 am   #74
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When I was a boy, I had a Philips EE1003 set (EE stands for Electronic Engineer) with which you could build electronic projects (alarms, counters, radio's, etc.).

I had constructed the two stage gramophone amplifier which I often used with the little crystal earphone instead of the loudspeaker (both were part of the EE1003 set). I had an old gramophone hooked up to the amplifier.

At some point I thought that perhaps I would get better results if I tried different points in the amplifier for hooking up the earphone. And I did find other points that worked (although not really better).

By the time I hooked it up somewhere between the first and second stage and still heard music, I thought I was realy onto something! I thought I discovered amplification with way less parts!

Eventually I connected the earphone straight to the input terminals of the amplifier, so straight to the gramophone output. I was baffled. I still heard music coming out of the earphone. I didn't understand how this was possible untill somebody explained to me that some crystal cartridges have rather high output.

I remember I felt betrayed.
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 12:48 pm   #75
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Some years later I wanted to turn a black and white TV I got from the local dealer into an oscillograph (or better: some kind of lightshow) by hooking up one channel of my stereo to the vertical deflection coil of my TV. Until than I only knew schematics of TV's in which the vertical deflection coil was connected to the secondary of the vertical output transformer only, so I thought my plan was a safe one....not knowing that this TV was different. I never knew what voltage was on that coil but it gave me quite a shock when I was hooking it up (while the TV was working...).

Like others already wrote: Looking back at those times I've been lucky I didn't get seriously hurt. I was fiddling around in working TV's for quite some time already when a neighbour explained the concept of a live chassis to me (never got a shock because of that).
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 3:00 pm   #76
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Gribnau View Post
When I was a boy, I had a Philips EE1003 set (EE stands for Electronic Engineer) with which you could build electronic projects (alarms, counters, radio's, etc.).

I had constructed the two stage gramophone amplifier which I often used with the little crystal earphone instead of the loudspeaker (both were part of the EE1003 set). I had an old gramophone hooked up to the amplifier.

At some point I thought that perhaps I would get better results if I tried different points in the amplifier for hooking up the earphone. And I did find other points that worked (although not really better).

By the time I hooked it up somewhere between the first and second stage and still heard music, I thought I was realy onto something! I thought I discovered amplification with way less parts!

Eventually I connected the earphone straight to the input terminals of the amplifier, so straight to the gramophone output. I was baffled. I still heard music coming out of the earphone. I didn't understand how this was possible untill somebody explained to me that some crystal cartridges have rather high output.

I remember I felt betrayed.
I had / still have the exact same set - two in fact - somewhere in a dusty corner of our loft, as I bought a second one (German version, but of course the component diagrams were largely language-independent). I too had a disappointment, but mine was based on an immature understanding of signal strength and distance in my case.

I built and modified one of the radio circuits hoping to hear the Trawler Band, based on a bit of the description which said something like “if you are not too far from the coast, you might hear all sorts of interesting conversations about what sort of a catch the fisherman has had.” I wanted to hear that!

I got my atlas out and looked at the UK compared to the size of USA. In my naive mind, “far from the coast” surely meant many hundreds if not thousands of miles. Surely (the UK being relatively small by comparison to somewhere like the USA), even living in the midlands of England, was I not actually close to the coast!? And anyway, there were all those foreign stations from Europe which I could hear on medium wave - I could hear them and they were much further away than any trawler would be. Trawler Band here I come!

There followed weeks of building ever longer and more varied shaped antennas out in my garden - all completely to no avail of course!
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 8:21 pm   #77
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I remember wondering why, when an electric fire was switched off, the redness of the element took some time to fade away. I could only conclude that it took some time for the electricity to run out of the fire.

So after letting the fire get nice and hot I pulled out the plug quickly and felt across the pins to see if I could feel the electricity exiting the fire. Luckily my theory was completely wrong and I felt nothing.
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 8:23 pm   #78
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FireballX,
I'm surprised you couldn't hear any shore stations after dark, no matter how far inland you were in the UK, even on a simple TRF receiver.
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Old 9th Nov 2020, 8:34 pm   #79
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Default Re: Ridiculous thoughts and ideas from a young age

I was never very successful with trawler band when I lived in Liskeard but by Grandmothers Sobell Transistor Radio Trawler band was teaming in Newlyn.

Her House was on the Hill at Gwavas with fantastic views out over Mounts Bay.

I didn't have access to a radio that covered trawler band when I lived in the St Ives area except my Philips Electronic Engineer EE8 and A20 but that was pretty deaf although I followed the instruction to wind a "short wave" coil.

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Old 9th Nov 2020, 8:56 pm   #80
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When I was about 11, I took home from my grandmother's house an old ozone machine to experiment with.
It was a big heavy bakelite item, and with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight it's a wonder I'm still here as the mains transformer must have produced about 6kV and was at least as leathal as a pre war TV EHT transformer or a microwave oven transformer of today.
The transformer output terminated on a pair of Terry clips and the ozone was generated by arcing between two concentric wire-mesh cylinders separated by waxed paper.
My experiments included connecting a long- wire aerial and earth to the Terry clips to reproduce something I had seen illustrated in my book "The Boy Electrician"
I can only imagine I had sufficient respect for electricity so as to proceed in a relatively risk-averse manner.
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