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The First Radio I Ever Built

When I was a kid, I came across an old book about crystal radios. These were simple pre-vacuum-tube AM receivers using a pyrite or galena crystal and a handful of hand-made parts. I decided to build one.

I was a little kid, maybe five years old, but the instructions seemed clear enough. There was a big coil, which I made from a paper tube and some string. A pebble made a fine crystal. There was something that looked like a piece of wrapped candy, which I later learned was a capacitor. Candy it was. By the end of the day, my work was complete, and I attached a headphone cut from a sponge with a piece of twine.

I fired up my radio with a powerful battery made from a tea tin, and together with my teddybear, listened to radio transmissions from faraway places. It was one of the best days of my life.

We tuned into strange broadcasts in languages we did not understand. We listened to our favorite songs. We listened to the news of our fellow citizens doing wonderful things to bring a better tomorrow.

I couldn't wait to show the radio to my older cousin. When I finally did, he laughed and told me that I made a nice toy out of old junk, and roughed up my hair. I looked at my radio... it did look like a shoebox full of scrap, with crudely drawn switches and dials. I felt ashamed.

Later that night I turned my radio on, expecting to hear familiar broadcasts. But I couldn't hear anything. I looked at my teddybear for advice, but he, too, was unusually silent.

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