What was your first electronics project?

I won't flatter myself to present this as a 'first project' but this bit of misadventure fits the general spirit of the topic.  To any of you younger readers, this tale harkens back to the pre-internet era before we had easy access to things like YouTube.  It's also a cautionary tale showing what happens when you combine an unquenchable sense of curiosity with a total lack of knowledge in the field your particular project falls into.

Back when I was ten I had seen some experiments on TV where batteries were used to illuminate a light bulb.  I spent a good part of the day trying to replicate these results but the light bulbs I had access to could not be powered with the measly dry cell batteries I had salvaged from electronic toys.

I knew I had to bring things up a notch.  Why fiddle around with batteries when there was a unlimited supply of electricity hiding in the walls.

As a bit of foreshadowing I will have you know that a movie had come out around this time called Short Circuit.  So while the phrase had entered my ears I had no real concept of what a short circuit actually was.

Back in the 80s my aunt was in the armed forces and was stationed in Germany.  For Christmas she had sent me a decorative lamp along with the adapter to convert its European plug to a North American one.  This adapter was going to be the key to unlock my experiment....

I stripped a couple of garbage ties and jammed them into the adapter.  The other sides of the ties were secured to a trail of coins using clear Scotch tape.  The coins which were arranged on my carpet formed a trail leading to a light bulb.

I wish I had the intuition then to have run the coins in two separate paths.  One path leading to the light bulb and one path returning from it.  But no, shortly after my garbage tie connections I had arranged the coins to converge into a single path.  You could say that 'the trap was set.'

Around this time I had a sobering thought where the gravity of playing with AC power suddenly hit me.  Did I dismantle my setup and abandon the experiment?  No, instead I called on my little sister for moral support.

We sat there a moment before I summoned the courage to plug the cord in.  The very moment the plug engaged we were startled with a frightening popping sound.  Worse still a little flame, not unlike that on a birthday candle, had formed on my carpet.

Immediately I unplug the cord and begin to frantically blow out the flame.  Fortunately the little fire was extinguished before it could spread.  Miracuously enough there were no visible burn marks.

"This could be a clean get away," I thought to myself.  That is of course if I had my sister's cooperation.

Acting as the adult in the room, my seven year old sister finally says, "Okay, I won't tell mom and dad, but promise me you'll never do this again."

Even in recent times I make the odd error but if I look back to these humble beginnings I realize I've come a long way.  We all have.

These are great stories. I made a ”ray gun” from a toy cap pistol which in and of itself would be considered dangerous today. My younger brother and I had found a discarded clothes iron with a frayed cotton braided electrical cord behind a house. Removing the cord we somehow attached it to a toy gun which was probably made from cheap pot metal. You can see how this is going, 5 year old me was going to plug it in while my 4 year old brother directed the ray. Fortunately he wasn’t holding it. I plugged it in, there was a pop, the fuse blew, and we ran away scared. This was not the only stupid thing we did and how we survived to adulthood I don’t know. 

Wow.  As you say, it's a wonder we survived into adulthood.  A couple of years back I saw a very sturdy looking iron with a 1950s anesthetic.  It was at a second hand store and listed for 7 dollars.  Looks like I dodged a bullet there.

LOL, I guess I misspelled aesthetic so badly that autotype chose anesthetic instead.

LOL, I guess I misspelled aesthetic so badly that autotype chose anesthetic instead.