To the Moon and Back chapter sampler

CHAPTER 3

A Tech Kid Grows Up

There was yet another beginning — hundreds of boys like me, a kid called Bryan Sullivan, tinkering with machines, making our own radios, reading science fiction and dreaming of outer space. When I was a little kid I wanted to be an electrician at Luna Park in Sydney, with its millions of light bulbs. I thought it would be exciting playing with the electric magic of dodgem cars and ferris wheels, all powered by electric motors driving wheels, cogs, chains and belts. Electricity fascinated me. Just why did the toaster get hot when it was plugged into those little holes in the plastic socket on the wall? Where did the music on the wireless come from? When I was 12, I made my first crystal (radio) set from just a coil of copper wire wound around a cardboard cylinder, a ‘cat whisker’ (a piece of crystal) and an old pair of ex-army headphones. At night I

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