Inventors Day

November 9, 2021

For several countries, the 9th of November is a day to celebrate inventors. Not sure why we don’t have such a thing in the UK but I thought I’d use it as an opportunity to mention a few of the inventors who had inspired me.

In my young days, my inspiration mostly came from fictional inventors. Professor Branestawm and Olaf the Lofty from Noggin the Nog I’ve mentioned before, but Q from James Bond was also one of my favourites.

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Also, the classical inventors Archimedes and Leonardo Da Vinci were also inspiration I found from books like the Jr Science Encyclopedia or The Mechanical World.

I don’t quite remember when I got into electronics, but when I do remember the first circuit I built which was a two-transistor astable multivibrator. So it was thanks to John Bardeen and Walter Brattain that I could create this circuit and  J W Allen and R J Cherry who created the red LEDs that were so common in my early projects.

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There were also two chips that appeared in pretty much all of my early projects, the 555 timer, from Hans Camenzind and the 741 OpAmp from Karl D. Swartzel Jr.

In later life, it was the Arduino Uno created by Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis that rekindled my love of electronics and is still a goto board for many tests and experiments.

So a big thanks to all these inventors and all those who have inspired me and others to make and repair.

By Andy from Workshopshed Add Comment

  Posted in: Inspiration