When I was eight, my dad decided it was time for me to learn about electronics. I had grown up with electronics all around me, but he thought it was time I had a formal lesson.
The first thing he taught me was how to solder electronic components.
He showed me how to use the soldering iron to heat up a wire, using a little bit of solder on the iron. A good soldering iron has a nice sharp tip on it that you can pinpoint on a delicate electronic component. Dad showed me how to join a piece of
wire to an electronic terminal by heating the wire and “tinning” it with a little solder, then attaching the wire and fussing it to the terminal with the iron.
He always cautioned: “Never use acid core solder, always use rosin core. Once I made a radio with acid core solder and a few days later, all the connections fell apart.”
I practiced quite a bit with solder and wire. I even made a stick figure man with arms, legs, head, and body made of wire and soldered together. Dad’s next step was to teach me how to make a schematic diagram. I learned the notation of all the basic electronic parts: resistors, capacitors, switches, lights, coils, transistors, and vacuum tubes.
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