I've moved this thread to Audiocentral in the hopes that it will reach a broader (less nerdy) audience.
35+yrs ago as a wee sprat I had the pleasure of working with a master glassblower at Johns Hopkins Medical School where I was a lab technician. Back in the day, every large 'wet' lab had such a master craftman.
50 years ago, every shoestore had a fluoroscope where we'd stand in the possible shoe purchase and have x-rays shot upwards into our gonads in order to gauge the shoe's fit. Popular Science published an article on making your own X-Ray tubes, which I did. My father came home, read the article, and promptly destroyed my working x-ray machine. As my sons are reasonably normal, he evidently acted in time....
Although I never made a transistor, most Sputnik era dweebs knew how to make a working signal diode. All it took was a rusty razorblade, safety pin and a couple of screws. Add a long wire (antenna) and a high impedance headphone and you got a working crystal radio.
