I think I was 3 or 4. I’d found a small light-bulb somewhere (maybe a dismantled Christmas gift) and I’d begged my dad to help me build something in his workshop. – so we built a flash light.

I remember nailing the blocks of wood together to form a small box that held a C-cell battery. A piece of wire acted as the contact to the cathode and a screw made contact to the anode and acted as the switch (loosening the screw pulled it’s point into the block of wood broke the contact with battery).

We used a trio of common nails partially driven into the end of the box to hold the lightbulb. I think I used the same technique several times later in other projects.

It’s quite amazing how clear some of those memories are. I think that was a pretty influential experience – it certainly set the stage for my later experiments.