[Nowhere Man]

What you buy at RS is batteries, headphones, bluetooth headsets. Even stand-alone computers no longer interest the young ones. Young folks mostly no longer know how (or even want) to use a soldering iron, a hammer, a volt-ohm-meter, a logic probe. For what? Just the thrill of creating a little circuit that makes a bulb light up, a bell "ding," or a spaker warble. Not much fun whenyou can play a tricky game on your iTablet.

Yeah, the big part is where you built it yourself. Something you made where you put in the time, effort and parts into something you made and it works. Shame it isn't as popular as it was. BTW, we graduate too many lawyers, MBA's and womyn's studies grads and not enough engineers. We will be "pwned" (owned) be countries like India, where their idea of electricity is a bare 75 watt bulb hanging from a ceiling and a transistor radio, but they graduate more engineers than we do.

[imardmd1]

They used to say, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Now, nobody wants to invent.

[TChad]

Something you made where you put in the time, effort and parts into something you made and it works.

I built a Heathkit color television with my father when I was a kid. I learned how to solder, and how to recognize a bunch of electronics components, how to (begin to) read my father's schematics, and a lot more.

We turned it on, made a few adjustments, and the thing worked beautifully.

It kept working for many years.