when I was about 18 I was a big fan of Monet and the impressionist painting movement in general so my dad took me to Boston by plane just to go see the exposition called "Monet in the 90's" at the art museum.
The year the original star wars movie came out I was 7 years old and had a Millennium Falcon for Christmas. I didn't want to open anything else, that's still my favourite Christmas gift.
Two kits, on successive Christmases, made up by my father, to build very simple transistor radios.
The first required an external aeriel and earphones. The second was larger, with an extra amplifier stage, built-in loudspeaker and internel ferrite-rod aeriel. Dad made the plywood cases but I had to assemble all the electronics: discrete components soldered to the tag- or strip- board bases. Remembering to clip a heat-sink to the transistors' leads to protect their fragile innards from the soldering heat.
These were not commercial kits! Nor plug-together modules.
Amateur electromnics was a major hobby then (1960s) and most towns of any size had shops stocking electronic and electrical components.
/ They were not my first attempt. Our 4th Year (ages 10-11) primary-school teacher ran an after-school "Radio Club" in which I was one of several boys building our own, very basic, "crystal sets" tuned to the BBC Home Service (now Radio Four). The "crystal" was a germanium diode; the rest was an inductor with a variable capacitor for fine-tuning. Very low power, driven entirely by the r.f. signal between a long wire aeriel and earth (via a central-heating pipe in my bedroom) - no battery required. Again parts from the local electronics shop, and for mine, a plastic sandwich-box for its case.
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Sadly when I went to retrieve them several years ago now from the loft when we cleared our deceased parents' home, someone had been there already, not known what they were, did not think to ask, and threw them away.
A Westinghouse 7-transistor radio when I was 13 in 1963. It was my constant companion for the next 5 years. I first heard The Beatles on it. And all of the great Original British Invasion groups.
@SW-User Yes, me too. It seems to me that it was a lot easier to get started; to make something that did something in those days. Now we have much more capable components like Arduino and related things but it isn't quite as immediate some how.
That kit was given to me at just the time I was starting to be interested in science and I think probably influenced me in my choice of career.
SW-User
@ninalanyon Maybe it's my old mind, but there is something to building and understanding what you are building that is part of the fun and learning process?