It all starts with humble components

When I was around 11 or 12 years old, I started to tinker with electronics. Together with a friend of mine, I built my first FM radio transmitter circuit, for which I bought the components at an electronics store in my town. After a few hours of soldering and fiddling with it, I didn’t get it to work. I was disappointed. But then a neighbor barged into our kitchen, saying: “Hey, I hear Bram on my television!” My mother was shocked and stared at me, but I was excited that my transmitter did work after all! A bit of re-tuning of the air inductor took me to the FM radio band.

For my next birthday, I got a Philips EE 2003 electronics kit. Step by step, the components were explained in a book, and I built circuits directly from the diagrams supplied. This way, I got to know transistors, resistors, capacitors and inductors, and I realized I could build anything with those components, although I didn’t understand how it all worked.