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When I was about 12, I stared building rockets out of metal bicycle pumps - filling them with a mixture I'd better not discuss and using the school machine shop to make nose-cones and fins etc. The launching ramps were made of timber and the ignition system was a firecracker fuse and 'run-like-hell". I had one actually go backwards once and bury itself in the back yard - the nose-cone blew off and all the exhaust products fired out the top instead of the bottom.
Somewhere in there I had a chemistry lab under the house until I spilt some boiling concentrated sulphuric acid down my leg one day in an excess of enthusiasm. Parents took a dim view of that one.
There were some army surplus telescopes in there somewhere too.
From there into high school, I started making spectroscopes to take photos of spectra from emission tubes 'borrowed' from the school physics lab. The camera was an original Kodak box brownie-style camera. These worked surprisingly well I am pleased top say and I managed not to blow myself up - which my parents thought a major achievement all on its own.
Not satisfied with that, in my year 10 - I guess I was about 14 then, I came across a circuit diagram for an NMR spectrometer in a Scientific American magazine. I didn't know how little I knew at the time, otherwise I would have been discouraged. In fact I only had the vaguest idea of what the hell and NMR spectroscope did - but it looked so cool I couldn't resist. I managed to scrounge a huge fixed magnet and wound some coils around it to increase the field strength and then set about making the electrics which - well, I had no idea about circuit boards so I just figured I'd just solder stuff together the way the circuity diagram went and before I knew what I was doing I ended up with this huge thing that looked like a ball of string with wires going everywhere. It was then that I realised how hopeless the project was.
There is a piece of chinese calligraphy I keep over my desk these days. It says in loose translation "The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know." I should have had that when I was a teenager. Would have saved me a lot of burns, bruises and bumps - not to mention having my backside whacked by the old man when I went too far in pursuit of the unattainable.
Around that time, testosterone kicked in, I discover girls and cars and I was off on a another mission altogether for many years.
The sad story of another would-be-geek who went and became a lawyer instead. Go figure!!
Peter
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