On: The Transistor, Part 1: Groping in the Dark

[WalterBright]

I had a crystal radio in the 60's. It was nothing more than an antenna, a coil, headphones, and of course the crystal. I had fooled around with making electromagnets and morse keys, and understood them. But the crystal completely baffled me.

[ZenoArrow → WalterBright]

I had one of those as a kid. The idea you could listen to the radio without any local power source (mains or batteries) was pretty amazing.

[madengr → ZenoArrow]

I built one, and it said “connect it to a pipe”. I had a piece of pipe in my room, and it frustratingly did nothing. They never said “an earth connected pipe.

Now I’m an RF engineer; go figure.

[WalterBright → madengr]

I discovered that if you connected a long wire to the phono inputs on an amplifier, you'd pick up the local AM stations.