Episode: 858
Title: HPR0858: Pre micro computer tech in the home #2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0858/hpr0858.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:40:30

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Thank you.
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. This is Mr. Gadget. And I was wanting to continue
on with a little discussion of the pre-vehicle computer tech in the home. So we've been over
some of the high tech kinds of things that were in the home in the last episode there. In the last
call in that being primarily the television and the high-fifth stereo as well as some of the other
electronic kinds of things that were their radios with a very technical group of people in terms
of the amateur radio operators. And so I wanted to continue on in this vein and talk about what it
was like being a geek, being a nerd, being a high tech kid back in the pre-micro-computer days. To a certain
extent I think I kind of grew up at least at the US because of the space race and how we were going to
beat the rescues to the moon, which of course we did. There was a lot of emphasis on science in the school in the 60s.
And that was when I went to elementary school as a early part of my junior high, what would be called middle school in
the United States of America. And even high school the first year of high school was in the 60s. And it was a different
landscape there. You know, this is, well, it basically was the space race that invented the microcomputers that were
eventually then the ones that spawned the microcomputer revolution. And there was a lot of science in the school,
and there's a lot of emphasis on science in the school. And there was a lot of science in the homes in a way that
does not exist now. And I was kind of reminded of this because of some things that I saw on the internet and I
didn't post it to Google Plus. And I will send some of these links to Ken. He was nice to not to do a lot of Wikipedia
entries and things like that on the subject of last week's show. And that was very interesting information.
And I'll send him some links to some of these types of things. And one of the things that got me thinking about
this was the golden book of chemistry. Now there was a whole series of golden books back in this time period. And I'm not sure exactly where
the vodka came from, although almost all of those, they were children's books, but almost all of them had a
finding and the finding at the edge of the books was gold. And I have no idea if that's why they were golden books,
or if the finding was golden, because they were golden books, something was going to miss the time. No, actually you
could probably look it up on Wikipedia and find out. Anyway, there was a golden book of chemistry of all things.
And I have also looked up and I have some references to this that I can find online.
So a couple of years ago, there was a series of podcasts that some of my podcasters that I follow, the tech
podcast group, get on Christmas presents. And one of the guys who was involved at that had found a place that
had an online version of the wish books, which were what Sears and Robot Company in the
middle of the day's here, back when you used to get catalogs and go through those. And I talked a lot about the
catalogs that were of interest to me at the youth. And you used to order things from the catalog. Well, the wish book
literally was the big catalog from Sears that would come out in the fall here, at least in the North American
continent. And then we come out in the fall. And it would have all of those things that you wanted for Christmas,
including the vast array of toys and things like that that you wanted as Christmas presents. And you
would of course tour over this and make you more decision about what you would ask. It was a bit of a
different time frame. You didn't get everything that you wanted and you didn't have to score a lot of things.
But you know, you're one or two specific things that you were interested in. And that was very interesting for
me in this regard, because I looked up, I knew the specific years in the mid-60s. And indeed, I found
exactly the things from the Christmas wish book. And one of those was also a recent more recently that I
found that was a chemistry set. And I got my first real chemistry set in 64, 65, somewhere in that
time frame. Kimberber, exactly which year. And this one was a full on chemistry set. It came in a
metal box, which then would separate and two sides in the two sides, which had shows for all the
various chemicals. It came with actual glassware, not plastic versions of beakers, and things like that,
but an actual glass beaker and various bits of glassware that you could use as part of this.
And I also remember my aunt, who had retired from being a nurse, and she was now a housewife,
but she took my cousin, who's four days older than I, and myself. We both had an interesting chemistry,
and we both got magic chemistry sets out here. And she set down with both chemistry sets. It
looked through each and every single one of the models to make sure there wasn't anything that we
were going to be too dangerous with in terms of ingestion of something. Nowadays, you cannot get
even over the calendar as an adult, some of the chemicals that were readily available in the
chemistry sets at the time. And so I had a chemistry set. I also had a microscope. I believe that
was the year following, and I got a fairly good student level microscope. And these were my
pride and joy. I was very heavily into science, and would actually go out. I mean, I would actually
spend my spare time doing conducting big experiments that were in the book and looking at results,
and even designing my own and all these types of things. So, the science through the school
transferred into science of the house. At the same time, or about that 65 time frame,
I also got heavily interested in electronics. And at the time, there were several different
outlets for that type of interest in the form of electronic kits, which you could build. So,
of course, initially, I would pick up a magazine of the time frame, a popular electronics
radio electronics, various ones like that. And those may be the names of what they mutated into
a little bit later in life. But there were several different ones, and even popular science.
And the simple thing you could do is building your own crystal radio set. And the crystal radio set
would actually involve a crystal that was a germanium crystal. And if you're doing it,
so really, really cool way, you actually got a germanium crystal. And you'd say,
let's call it a test whisker, which was a little piece of wire that you would put at various
points on that crystal, because different points on the crystal and the contact points of the
wire on that crystal would vary how good the rectification was working for rectifying the
AM radio signals that you were trying to get. And so, you needed some type of crystal rectifier.
And as I say, some of the kits that were available would give you that crystal. And even a mechanism
of the kind of how the wire that would actually work in conjunction with that crystal. And then
you had to have a length of wire that you would wrap into a coil. So this would usually be bare wire
that you would wrap usually single conductor copper wire. And you would wrap that coil as a
rather wide space and wide diameter air coil. And usually that would be on a oatmeal box.
So the round oatmeal cylinder you would use as your coil. And then the way you would actually
tune this circuit, you'd have the crystal and you'd have the coil. And you would wire this
together and you would have a a a a two double circuit. And the way you would actually tune it is
you would tap the coil at a certain point. So you have another piece of wire that you would
vary along that coil to tune it to a specific resident kind of a frequency so that you would
better have better selection of your AM radio signals. This is not a very sensitive kind of thing,
but it was certainly in terms of its solitivity. It wasn't a very narrow band that you got with this.
Now you could use that to tune in the radius station that you were interested in and make it
any louder. And all of this then there were no amplifiers involved or anything like that. So
usually they do have a cams. You had a set of earphones. And these are a big kind of
well there there were big round things that looked kind of like a all doughnut that was on each
ear although there was not a hole in the middle. And these then had well I guess you would call
the speakers although most of them were the diaphragms were metal even rather than just the
more malleable paper and rubber that were used to in high-fi speakers. We're not talking about
a high-fi kind of a thing here. You also might use a crystal earphone which was a small earphone
that would fit in your ear. There was a very tinny sound if you plug that into a regular AM radio
of the time. Nowhere during the facility of the ear buds that you would put into your
music player nowadays. But that very chimminess of the sound accentuated certain frequencies
that made those frequencies loud enough for you to be able to hear over the radio. So you can build
your own radio here from a few parts. And you can acquire these via mail order or at various
electronics kinds of important like radio chat or here locally it was bursting. That will be
nationally you know it's Lafayette radio and some other radio catalogs that were on the
national scale. If interesting I didn't find out this time but later on excuse me later on
I learned that soldiers during World War II and I suppose maybe even as late as the the Korea
conflicts but I know for sure during World War II soldiers would actually make their own crystal
radios and instead of having a crystal they would use a rusted razor blade. So the same razor
blade that they would use to shave their faces when that got a little bit rusty you could actually
use the cat swissker and you could place the wire at that point where the razor blade was a
little bit rusty and that would work as the crystal did to rectify the signal and allow you to
have your own little radio. So all you would have to carry around with you was some wire
have something to wind around wire it up and use the razor blade with the cat swissker
and you can have yourself a little portable radio and listen on your headphones.
Hard for you to share with your buddy but you could each listen to it and the use of
the radio that many of the GIs would be listening to the infamous Tokyo Rose if you were in the
Pacific theater and there was an equivalent of Tokyo Rose I can't remember what she was called
for the Germans that was a radio program that would play popular music of the day and then
lady with a lovely soothing voice would try to explain to you how stupid you were to be fighting
against them and how you should just give up and you know join their cause and you know become
a slave to the atmosphere. Anyway uh so crystal radios or even you know non crystal crystal
radios the simplest type of radio that you could build and then it would build on up from there
and there were various types of kits involving transistors uh more advanced ones you could build
your own real AM radio. There were all types of kits and some of the most popular ones the ones
that I built many many of there was a certain kind of a standard way of building these kinds of
things so you didn't have printed circuit boards the way you do today but you did what was called
breadboarding and breadboarding would involve usually some type of insulated materials that have holes
now quite often the insulated material might be a piece of wood or there was a kind of a fake
wood of the time that was kind of pressed board and it would have holes in it but one of the
more popular kits of the day were a series of kits that Radio Shack had where all of the parts
that you needed the resistors the capacitors and the transistors and even you know
there are a couple of things that they would use to connect wires when you do to add or remove wires
and all these radios required to usually a really long antenna you know the longer the
antenna the better in terms of the sensitivity of your crystal AM radio. I used to have uh
I grew up in what was called what it was called the split level house uh here in the United States
and so you would lock in and go up a half story to some more rooms and then you'd go up another half
story to where the bedroom's were and the first entrance you could go into was a club level
entrance that was a garage and a family room in our house and you could go down half story to
a half basement that was underneath the living room so you kind of had the whole house split into
with two of the the floors half a story down from the other two floors and you kept on going up
half story well up in that second story window of my bedroom uh as a boy I had access then to a tree
that was going out in the yard and I had a wire that I had gotten up into the tree there
ran the wire over and then it came in my window so and became my antenna for some of these radios
that I built. Get it out of high and the longer you could get the better off you work
and uh the the kits that came from radioshack they were called p-box kits per-for-word box kits
and so there would come in a plastic box so there's a typical plastic box that uh people of
the time would be familiar with it was two halves of the box of the hinge was actually plastic
and uh the box would come apart and and open up and it was a very the familiar design if you
grew up in the sixties you know exactly what I'm talking about the plastic bill boxes that would
open uh well this is a larger size one of those and one half of it had uh on one side one large
side had these holes perforated in it right so there was there was your first port all the parts
you needed were inside here and that included wire uh it included all of the components as I say
to connect your wire antenna maybe your ground wire or things like that you needed a way to
be able to add or remove those kinds of things maybe even batteries that were involved and so
there were these little clips that you used uh you can push down your finger and put the wire in
they were called p-box kits clips and that was the one way you would do it and then the these
particular ones are radio shack had a different one it was just kind of a post with a spring load
on it and you'd push down on the little uh the little t bar at the top of the spring and that would
open up the hole you'd stick the wire in and then you released it and it would make an electrical
connection and so you could build these kits it had everything in there that you needed and you
would stick the components in cut them off and then solder them together and uh build various
types of things that amplifiers and radio uh for shortwave that I think the most complex
p-box kit I ever built was a shortwave radio it was a regenerative shortwave radio which is a
certain type of radio circuit it's a little bit easier to build than the uh radio circuits that
are used in today's shortwave radios and uh it uh it involved some more complex you know
why being a coil we were just talking about a single coil on an oatmeal box you were talking
about so much more complex kinds of coils in order to build that kit and there were various
ones of those that I got through the years and built all of those kinds of things we even had
and they still sell some of the fed radio check to this day some of the other sorry electronic store
sell these where you had various components on uh in a box and so picture yourself a a box
of a typical gain would come in like monopoly or uh you know any kind of board game only maybe
a little bit taller than a standard monopoly box but you opened it up and there you had your
components all mounted fallen cardboard and a headless spring for the connectors for whatever it
was three connectors for a transistor uh two connectors for a resistor you'd have various
resistors and capacitors a couple of transistors the more complex ones of these would even have
an integrated circuit that you could use some of them even have a uh a meter that you could use
to measure uh voltage and current and you could fit together various types of circuits just by
using the included wires and wiring together the components in the proper way and you could build
and and these kits were like 40 in one and 75 in one and the 150 in one 150 in one or rather large box
and you could build a 150 different electronic circuits all with the components that were built
into that box so there you didn't even have to do any soldering you just wires things up
the right way as you had your circuit you played around with it you experimented see what
what happened if I do this but what happened if I do that you started to understand what the
circuits were you could see circuits in magazines and books that you can get from the library
and uh also that you could buy and you could experiment with those circuits and all it took
with wiring things together and this is how a lot of us in the 60s learned the electronics
that later why do you think that there it was this micro computer revolution that could take place
when the manufacturers finally had the manufacturing down to the point where they could start selling
the micro computer chips beyond just the space program and certain specialized military
applications that they had for them okay just because the chip existed didn't mean that the
average person in the home was going somebody without an electrical engineering degree was going
to be able to understand and apply those and the reason I will put to you that it was a perfect
situation for the homebrew club the right the homebrew computer club to come to fruition
in the San Francisco Bay area and thus we be the spawning point for the C to start Apple computer
and CPM and all the other kinds of things that the micro computer revolution in that area the reason
why and the reason why there were so many people like myself who are ready to understand
the the plus of these of the computer and the possibility inherent within those computer chips
that were now available to us is because we understood the basics of electronics which we had
learned through those kits and through that in that 60s focus on science the focus on science
the focus on yes if you're interested in chemistry set you can experiment with chemistry and you
know you could experiment with various other kinds of things I mean the the going beyond just
blink and log and things like that that were early building kinds of things and being able to have
an erector set and you know how many mechanical engineers came out of that and this is important
because I don't see that today another thing that is kind of inspiring me to have this as a topic
and to kind of continue on here in terms of the the the geek kinds of things that were in the
pre-market computer days we're talking about very crude compared to today's kind of world but
this is a technology that was available and it was in the hand of young people who were interested
in it I ran across a a site that once again in San Francisco there is a organization which I
assumed that this is kind of going along with the general charge of this organization has
but it was specifically going to be starting a project to encourage young ladies of color
to inspire them and to give them the opportunity to understand what it's like to program
and what it's like to be a programmer in case that's something that they would be interested in
pursuing as a life career I stated this and if something as I said when I posted this and what
and I'll state it here okay in 30 plus years of making my living full-time with micro computers
I'll state two things number one people need to stop telling girls that they are bad at math
okay because I can't tell you how many people who I see who don't think they're good at math
really are it's just they weren't getting some concept that some teacher didn't know how to
teach them in the right way all right and as a father of two technical young women well I
always encouraged in anything that it was they wanted to pursue including anything technical
that they wanted to pursue and that offense me that anybody would say oh you're a girl you would
never be able to understand this okay we need to encourage this and the second thing is the
fact that this is young girls of color because I will tell you in my 30 plus years in technology
okay it is by far the exception rather than the rule to see anybody that is not a white guy
with the exception of my brethren from the Indians a comment who are now in the US working in IT jobs
but that's a recent phenomenon I'm talking about within the United States of America at least
now hopefully it's different outside and we just need to do better within the United States of
America but I'm telling you for a fact okay not everybody is a scientist not everybody is an
engineer and not everybody is a computer programmer and we cannot afford to miss the chance to give
who would be sick of that we cannot afford to lose any scientist we can't afford to lose any
engineers and we can't afford to lose any computer programmers and I don't care whether you're red
green or blue every single person who has an attitude to do any of these technical kind of
careers to be encouraged in every way possible to pursue them and I don't see where we have in
the next generation the people who are going to build all of the cool little gadgety toys that I
love because I don't see them learning the basics of those gadgets and and that basic knowledge
that then allows them to understand that theory and go out there and make improvements on it
and with that in mind in next week's episode which will be forward to it is because it will
be just before the big Christmas shopping opportunity of Thanksgiving week I am going to talk about
various assembly companies online that sell kits there's a big huge kit resurgence here in terms
of electronics and if you know a young person who wants to be a chemical engineer I'm not sure
what I can do for you in chemistry because nowadays you don't get glassware you get plasticware
and you don't get real chemicals you get things that have been deemed safe for you know children
and it's extremely curtailed and so that avenue I'm not sure is there but electronically
speaking there's lots of kits out there to get people started on programming and started on
the wonders of I mean one of the coolest thing is just writing that first program where you get an
LED to blink on and off and you did that you wrote that program that got that LED to blink on
and off in a certain pattern and it's hard to describe how cool that is I did that you know
and even building the kit and there's all kinds of kits that I think that would get kids who are
interested in technology to understand some of those gadgets that they're using because right now
I think it was azimuth I may be wrong on this but I think with Isaac azimuth he's the one who
says a lot of these really cool things like this I believe it was him that said no technology that
sufficient okay any sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from magic for the people who
don't understand it a high technology that they're not familiar with will be seen as magic by that
and most people out there nowadays and I would still tell you a a high percentage of people who
have the attitude and have the I don't know how to say this the personality type the the way of
thinking there's a way of thinking that you need to have and not everybody can do it and God bless
them I'm not saying they all should have to do it okay but we need to have every presented every
person who is capable of the type of thinking processes that it takes to become a scientist to
become an engineer so we kind of prove a computer programmer we need all of them right to go
into those technical fields we can't afford to lose anybody don't tell me that your kids don't
do well on standardized tests and they're incapable of doing it let's get together and let's
figure out what it is they need to be able to experiment like this because through this kind
of experimentation they'll be that interest and once there's that interest they will succeed at it
they will trust me they will but to the vast majority of people including a percentage of
kids nowadays that I know would probably have the aptitude to understand this it might as well
be magic they have no understanding about how these things work they know how to work them
but they have no understanding of how they work and we need to get every single person on this
planet who has a capability of understanding how they work on the path of understanding how they
work in order so we can have them through that understanding have new cool things
that will seem like magic okay so next week I'll talk about various electronic kits that I'm
aware of and various types of sources that you have on the internet that if you know a young
person that you can point them towards that or even spend just a few bucks and get them started
on this path but until then this is Mr. Gadget and I'll be out here all the electronic friends here
hoping around trying to find some cool new electronic giga or new dad that and trying to
understand how it's going to work okay and you'll be careful out here I'll talk to you next time
bye now
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