Early 1980s I was early teens I got this little 25 electronic schematics book from the library.
I saw this two led blinking light with two transistors two capacitors and a bunch of resistors, that would be my first circuit to build
I bought a 220V iron and solder that ofcourse was not fit to make this stuff (what did I know, nobody to teach me) and went with the bill of materials to the electronic parts store.
There they had the resistors and leds but not the exotic old transistors from the schematic which was from the 70s. They told me I could use two other transistors that were plastick and not the metal can from the schematic and also the capacitors which were 16V rated they only had 25V ones which would not matter according to them.
So I came home proud with my treasure parts and started to build the circuit just to burst in tears since the transistors looked completely different and I had no clue how to find out what was the emitter, collector or base. I did not even know what it was back then. I tried my best to solder everything together without pcb, just in the airlead manner. And ofcourse when I connected the 9V battery.................... nothing happened.
Big tears chrsing the salesperson who told me the transistors were the same and the voltage on the capacitors did not matter, yeah right!
No help, no friends with knowledge, a father who did not know a transistor from a capacitor so that was the end of it.
Till half a year later I met someone at school who had a real analog Tandy (Radioshack in the US) multimeter
and knew how to measure these magic three pin components.
He made it to work.
Since then two years later I met my neighbour across the street, a real geek working at Philips tv labs who had an attick full of scopes, tv cameras, computer etc. Etc. It took a year before he agreed to teach me one and another about electronics and he was my inspiration and mentor to study electronics and the rest followed.
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