In the years before television, our family enjoyed something that was attractive enough to pull me away from my Philmore crystal set with its finicky "cats whisker" that had to be set just right to hear the whisper of broadcast stations in my headphones. Our whole family would visit a large railway station a few miles away. My older brother, Mom, Dad and I spent many happy warm summer evenings there on the station platform watching the steam locomotives chugging back and forth along sidings assembling cars into trains. The ballet of moving rail cars was interrupted from time to time by a passenger train arriving at the platform, the car windows filled with the faces of travelers arriving from a distant city.
To this kid, watching one of those huge steam locomotives hauling a long train clanking, chugging and blowing off steam as it stopped only a few feet away from me was almost as exhilarating as snagging clear-channel radio station KFI on my Philmore late at night. Almost. I guess that's why I ended up in electronics instead of working on the railroad. Technology has given me many great tools. There's a lot that I can see on TV that expands my world. There's even more on the World-Wide Web. Still, those appliances tend to isolate me from the real world. It's the difference between driving my MGA roadster and cruising along in an air-conditioned, sound-insulated luxury car. The modern car may offer greater convenience and comfort, but it does so at the cost of isolating me from the world outside. There's more than nostalgia or the necessity of saving money in tinkering with homebrew designs and assembling kits. It's a search for a balanced life in which we make time to experience things that interest us "up close and personal". It's coaxing an unlikely collection of parts into herding electrons around so we can pick up the movement of a telegraph key or the sounds of a voice from a distant place. It's a sense of "wonder" - like seeing that giant steam locomotive roll to a stop next to me all those years ago. How can a person be healthy without experiencing a sense of "wonder" every day? Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
