4 ms·
Sometimes only in looking back you can see an event that was pivotal in your development. It was 1962 and John Glenn had just orbited the earth three times.
by rmason 3y ago
Sometimes only in looking back you can see an event that was pivotal in your development. It was 1962 and John Glenn had just orbited the earth three times. My dad's brother paid his yearly visit to Detroit around the time of my tenth birthday and he brought me a present. It was a crystal radio in the shape of Glenn's capsule.
I remember eagerly hooking up the ground to the radiator and sitting on the bottom steps to the second floor. The joy I had in bringing signals out of the air. I kept a notebook on all the different stations and their call letters.
That led pretty directly to getting my amateur radio license four years later. A dozen years later I bought a HP programmable calculator and taught it how to do tasks at the business I then managed. Storage was a magnetic strip you fed into the machine.
Still later at another business I took my new business computer and taught myself to learn Lotus 123. That led in a straight line to dBase II and quickly a host of other languages. Another ten years it led to a new career as an entrepreneur leading to present day.
Most people if they look back there was a spark that led to a lifetime interest in something whether it be a hobby or a career. I told both my nieces before they headed off to university to take advantage of your time to try different things, if only a single time. I have a friend who tried scuba diving and that led to him owning his own diving shop. A buddy joined the bicycle club and met his wife.
- jstanley 3y agoCrazy how people's experiences can be so different. I tried making crystal radios 5 or 6 times in my life (one of which from a kit) and never heard a thing.
- stormdennis 3y agoI'm utterly useless but had a crystal set as a kid that worked, main thing was having a decent aerial. I got such a kick out of it even though I could only get one station.
- blooalien 3y agoFor me, it was my first crystal radio led to an interest in electronics; electronics -> technology; technology -> science in general (hobby level interest) -> computers / computer sciences (starting with Apple ][ / Commodore / Atari days when 64K was a lot of memory, on through Windows, MacOS, Unix and Linux PCs). From there, the "sky's the limit" as computers can be a useful, educational, and entertaining tool for very nearly any career / hobby these days.
- jgrahamc 3y agoTrue. I think the spark for me getting into computing was that my parents took me to a thing at Cambridge University in the mid-1970s when I was a child. The thing was for bright children and you could choose whatever you wanted to do and who to talk to. I chose to ask someone (either a professor or a postgrad) how a computer worked. This kind person sat down with a piece of paper and described a Turing machine. After that I went home and started imagining "programs" on paper. I didn't see a real computer until around 1980.