It's too bad you missed out on the experience. It was a lot of fun, a sort of mixture of knitting and following a detailed map. I was doing it with circuit de

It's too bad you missed out on the experience. It was a lot of fun, a sort of mixture of knitting and following a detailed map. I was doing it with circuit designs I had made myself, so I had the fun of that early stage of deciding what to hook up, where to place things on the board, and so forth. I laid it all out on paper, then made pin-connection tables (again, by hand) and checked everything over and over. Then it was on to the exciting stage of placing components on the board and wiring. To avoid confusion, it helped to lay the wires out very precisely, so all steps had to be done with care and frequent checking. Precision work like that is very absorbing. Time just goes by as you live in the moment -- a bit like getting lost in music or art. Beyond this relaxation-through-concentration element, the actual materials were beautiful. Gold posts, and silvery wires, each gleaming in the bright light I needed to see my work taking shape. The wrapping itself took a little bit of skill, and it was lovely to feel the coils going on, each precisely the same as another. Even stripping the insulation was fun, somehow. I had an electric wrapper, but I really preferred doing it by hand. More zen. All of this was in the 1970s, and was aimed at purpose-built scientific equipment in a university environment. All the materials are long-gone and I have no photographs of anything. Everything is lost to history, except for isolated memories of the great fun I had. And, bonus, it all worked in the end!