Radio sets and Perl
Playing around can be unexpectedly useful.
Our astronomer recently finished a biography of a prominent British radio astronomer of the mid-20th century. It appears this one was attracted to science by an engaging public lecturer, and went on to spend much of his free time as a boy building and using a crystal radio set. This took some skill and ingenuity, but was far less expensive than buying a vacuum-tube model. This was the Depression, after all, and the latter sort of set was a major purchase even for the households that could afford it. It seems that building a crystal set on one’s own was almost a required event for the major scientists and engineers of that generation.
Later on, especially after the invention of the transistor, it became much easier to build a radio, and the sets became more powerful and versatile. For the ambitious and skilled, one could find a circuit diagram and buy components, then set to work with a soldering iron. Not only were there radios; a large selection of possible electronics was accessible to the tinkerer. To cater to his needs (rarely her needs, unfortunately) there arose stores like Radio Shack selling parts. For the slightly less ambitious, Heathkits packaged everything together and provided directions.
There must have been a maximum of electronic tinkering (call it a Golden Age if you will) sometime between the ’60s and the ’80s, about the time it changed direction. We remember being introduced to the idea of digital computers and programming languages in some out-of-school activities, where there was access to a machine that now seems almost Stone Age. Tinkering went digital. Instead of soldering transistors or op-amps, one wrote code. At first learning was haphazard and piecemeal; but we weren’t being taught and tested on it, which was the important thing. And learning could be unexpectedly useful later on. (The link actually refers to a rather later era.)
To repeat, the essence of tinkering is that one does it in one’s off-time, and is not taught it in school nor tested on it. Perhaps the decline of the soldering tinkerer was foretold when an electronics class was offered in High School. And similarly, the decline of the coding tinkerer could be seen when programming was offered as a class at that level.
No doubt something like electronic and coding tinkering still goes on. Our tutor had one student who built his own 3D printer from scratch, out of boredom more than anything else. But we don’t think organized “hack-a-thons” quite qualify, useful as they are. And when our tutor went looking for a Radio Shack to get components for simple circuits for his Physics students, he couldn’t find one.
The tinkering impulse must still exist. Where is it directed now?
