Summary
On Hackaday last week, and on the podcast, we were talking about one of the educational toys of yesteryear that launched a thousand careers, at least if the comment section is to be believed: the Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronics kit. The “toy” itself was basically a bunch of components with spring terminals, but the secret sauce was in in the instruction book, and maybe the marketing.
Tom had one of these when he was a kid, and told a great story about wanting it desperately based on the ads he had seen with kids Morse coding to each other. When he got the kit, and found out that “it was just a bunch of wires” he was fully pissed off. But he worked through the examples, learned some basic electronics, and the rest is history.
What I really love about this story is the siren’s call of a good project. Tom was pulled in, and maybe even fooled, by the advertising, but it probably changed his life. It’s funny how many of our folks can remember the first project that got them hooked as well. With me it was some simple audio effects pedals and then maybe later some simple BEAM robots, and for younger hackers maybe it was a 3D printer or Arduino project.
Digital or analog, the common ground here is that we all thought that some project was cool enough to warrant the sweat of learning enough to do it. Good instructions are helpful of course, and having the parts on hand never hurts. But it’s the promise of making something that you really want that I think underlies all good first projects. (And heck, every subsequent project as well.)
So while Tom, and a bunch of our readers, were looking back with nostalgia at the 200-in-1, I’m thinking about how many more than 200 projects I’ve seen made by our community, and even featured here on Hackaday, that are out there to provide the motivation to get someone started. Keep on hacking!
It didn’t help me that I was color blind, growing up with sickly parents who adopted me later in life. My Dad did have a few magazines, but he was a second shift railroad man–which meant he was at work when I was let out of school.
So I became a bookworm instead.
Since my folks were Depression babies…the youngest of their brothers and sisters–all my childhood memories were of endless trips to hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral homes.
That poisons the can-do right out of you.
If anything, I learned to HATE the sound of the rotary telephone ringing….I wanted to smash it, in that it seemed every fourth call or so would start my Mom to bawling over the latest disaster.
Instead of learning the wonders of electronics, you instead learn to look for the next shoe to drop. My folks were not the most-evolved-people…they loved Hee Haw and hated that I watched Star Trek…but they tried at least.
I lost them both in my 30s
I had the 150-in-1, pictured above. It didn’t have the plastic control panel on the front, just a wooden box. But it did have an IC chip and a seven segment LED. Unfortunately, I got bored with it after a few weeks. I didn’t have a supportive enough environment to let my imagination carry on. No proper work space, or interested adults around. Perhaps if I’d had access to a soldering iron and a good multimeter, I’d have been able to harvest components from all the discarded electronics I would routinely come across.
Of course my son had access to Snap Circuits and LittleBits. We put together a Useless box, and a robotic arm kit. I had him go hands on building his gaming PC. We have both an FDM, and a resin printer for electro mechanical interfaces. He routinely sees me diagnose and repair circuits, with meter, thermal camera, and iron. Yet, he exhibits no inclination to explore on his own, other than to put together pre-made kits with explicit instructions.
Today’s world is such a target rich environment, with so much instantly available information, that you have to be a resolute autist to be able to focus your energies on anything. There is always some easier form of low level dopamine screaming for attention out of the corner of your eye. Gaming and Social media, of course being the main culprits.
I suppose what we really need, is to create a gamified, socially interactive educational network, that is also a safe environment for the young, and freely available to the public. Matriculation through high score!
I fear for the future. My grandchildren, (If I ever get any) will be lucky to have George Jetson’s button pushing job. And Mr. Spacely won’t exist, other than an AI representation. The vast majority will be employed in low level, nonrepetitve, maintenance oriented, day labor, where it makes more economic sense than employing specialized robots.
Wow. Just meant to respond with an associated experience. So easily drawn astray!
I wanted one but couldn’t afford it. So I built one out of offcuts of plywood, with a hinged sloping front and screw terminal blocks instead of springs. But I didn’t use it much.
But it set a pattern that has so often been true: building a thing is more fun and more instructive than actually using it once built!
I wish more people understood that.
I despise cost cutters…like Boeing’s CFO Debbie Hopkins who once said that they didn’t need engineers to build airplanes.
Besides it is engineers that can find ways to lower costs if given the chance–as here:
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-laser-aluminum-foil-terahertz-polarizers.html
I love stories like that…so tinkerers still matter.
I could not even get my locker’s combination lock to work at school, so I just lugged everything from room to room in a huge book satchel so I didn’t have to fool with it.
The wrong lesson.
You either master life or it masters you.
These are still being made by TroneX and Ive now got a few of these kits including one built in partnership with the University of Cambridge Sound Lab And the Japanese versions.