http://www.decodesystems.com/lectron.html
LECTRON
I have an interest in electronics from the 1960's and 1970's.
One rather unique product of that time is a hands-on "building
block" approach to putting circuits together, somewhat like
the much more recent Legos RCX controller and associated
attachments.
This article describes the introduction of the Raytheon
Lectron series of electronic block kits.
If you have any of these kits gathering dust and would like it
to have a good home, please send me an e-mail.
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[ei-sept67] [This article appeared in the September 1967 issue
of Electronics Illustrated.]
[ei-sept67-] Instant is the word of the jet age. Time grows
more valuable every day. Once we spent six days in leisure
travel from New York to California by train. Now we can't wait
for a supersonic jet to get us there before we leave. And so
it is with electronics. There's a mountain of information to
learn in what always turns out to be too little time.
To help grease the skids of learning basic electronics and get
your hands into practical working circuits, there's a new kit
of domino-like plastic electronic boxes. Now, this isn't just
an electronic game. It's the way to instant learning.
Big drag when studying electronics is putting circuits
together. It's time-consuming to cut and twist component
leads, connect them, solder them, support them and keep them
from shorting. You have enough to do just learning how a
circuit operates. And then think of the mess when you take
everything apart for another experiment. Solder drippings,
burned finger, broken leads, sloppy layouts, heat-damaged
semiconductors - all of this makes you wish you'd never
started.
But now it can be as much fun to put electronic circuits
together and to learn fundamentals as it is to put words
together when you play Scrabble. The Egger-Lectron Model 8400
learning aid is imported from Germany and will be distributed
by the Macalaster Scientific Co. (a subsidiary of Raytheon),
186 Third Ave., Waltham, Mass., 02154. In this country they
will be called electronic dominoes.
Just about anyone can put together an operating circuit as
easily as they could play real dominoes. Each of the plastic
boxes contains one or more electronic components or an
interconnecting part. The kit supplied to us by Raytheon
contains a carefully-selected collection of components, all
neatly done up in plastic boxes bearing a schematic symbol of
the contents, a manual of experiments and two work boards.
Even a 9-year-old child can match the marked dominoes with
those on the schematics to build and demonstrate a light
meter, electronic thermometer, tone generator or radio - to
mention a few of the 90 experiments in the manual that
accompanies the complete set. For the high school student,
there are more advanced projects such as a three-transistor
reflex-AM radio, metering circuits, transistor-testers and
simple computer flip-flops.
[ei-sept67-] The three-transistor reflex-AM radio and several
smaller circuits were put together in about an hour the first
evening we worked with the set. And that included time for
experimenting - which is at least half the fun of building the
circuits. Of course, if you want to snap the boxes together
really fast, give the circuit a quick test, then pull it apart
and snap together another circuit. You could do eight or ten
circuits in an hour.
The set we show here contains 108 plastic boxes. Sixty-five
contain such components as resistors, capacitors, transistors
(with and without a bias resistor), a meter, a relay, a
thermistor, potentiometers, rheostats, RF transformer,
speaker, push-button switches, diodes, variable capacitor,
photocell and battery packs. Eight are blanks in which there
are small contacts that accept the leads of resistors,
capacitors, inductors or transistors for supplying values not
included in the set. Jacked boxes will accept special inputs
or test leads, for example. Other boxes contain connectors to
join boxes to boxes or to ground a component to the work
board.
How Does It All Work? In vaudeville they used to say it was
all done with mirrors. In Dominoes it's all done with magnets.
Instead of using clips, binding posts, or springs to hold
parts together, each box is equipped with small magnets at the
pointswhere it is ot contact another box or the board. The
sides and the bottom of each box are made of clear plastic so
you can see what's inside. The top of each box - carrying the
schematic symbol - is opaque white.
Some of the circuits can, incidentally, be a little touchy.
Squeeze a little here, apply some pressure there and suddenly
the circuit works like a charm - a light blinks, the meter
needle moves or the speaker sounds. The longer we used the
set, however, the less we seemed to have contact problems.
[ei-sept67-] The work surface of each of the 13 x 15-1/2 inch
work boards is covered with a plated ferrous metal sheet
forming the ground or common connection for all the circuits,
just like a radio chassis. Since two battery boxes and two
work boards were included in the set, it is possible to put
together two circuits at the same time - provided you don't
have too many components in each circuits. The concept has
great potential as a teaching tool. In only a few seconds it
is possible to set up a practical circuit that would only be
schematic symbols in a textbook. The work boards can be
propped up on their built-in stands or hung on the wall so
that a whole classroom can see the demonstration. Componenets
in any circuit can be changed instantly to show their effect
on circuit performance. Special experiments in the manual
demonstrate the characteristics of components - resisitance,
inductance and capacitance; how tuned circuits affect radio
reception; effects of base current on emitter-collector
current flow and other electronic principles.
Okay, let's open the manual and see what we can learn. Believe
it or not, the first experiment is a multivibrator flasher
made with 21 boxes. Now this is hardly the sort of experiment
and the 19 that follow is simply to give you a taste of some
of the interesting things to come.
Experiment No. 21 is about as simple as you could want. It
consists of a bulb, battery and switch in series. This is
basic. In the next two experiments you put resistors in series
with battery and lamp to note the effect of adding resistance
in the circuit. The lamp, of course, gets dimmer. From there
the experiments go on through multivibrators, audio, photocell
applications, relays, etc., ending with a burglar alarm.
[ei-sept67-] Everybody who has seem the dominoes has found it
hard to keep his hands off them. Their arrival in our New York
office threatened to play havoc with production schedules, in
fact, until some killjoy remembered that they had been
designed for kids. So we sheepishly carted them off to a
household that included a bright 14-year-old. He was
delighted.
Frist project on the agenda was, of course, the AM radio
circuit - even though that's toward the back of the book. It
worked and he was hooked. He and his father (who was also
hooked by this time) were having a grand time trying circuit
after circuit when the eight-year-old kid sister showed up and
wanted to play, too. Now this is not quite cricket, according
to Raytheon, because the dominoes are geared to high-school
instruction. Nothing daunted, she abandoned her numbered
painting and pitched in.
It's a good thing that battery packs and work boards supplied
in pairs in the set they were using. Otherwise we would have
been responsible for introducing dissention into a happy home.
As it was, both kids ended up pushing Dad aside and going
their, merry, electronic ways. Numbered painting? Who needs
it?
Next of the priviledged junior set to get his grubby little
hands on the dominoes was a five-year-old. Now we were really
on unspoiled ground since this boy had never even heard of a
circuit. We tried experiment No. 21. The chocolate-smeared
finger gleefully pushed the button of the push-to-close switch
while the bulb flashed on and off. Fine - audience
participation! But what was he getting out of it, we wondered.
Next he wanted to see the meter work so we set up the
battery-tester circuit with the same push-to-close switch.
More delight.
The experience of a five-year-old can't be expected to add up
to a hill of beans, electronically speaking. But it does
demonstrate the appeal of the dominoes. It's hard to imagine
any other means by which you could get across these basic
concepts so quickly and so vividly. The fact that kids can put
the parts in place themselves and see immediate results from
their efforts beats fussing with Fahnestock clips and
interconnecting wires all hollow - to say nothing of messing
with soldering irons.
All this is fine in the school. Homebodies may have
reservations about the cost, however. A basic starter kit, the
Mini Lectron, having pretty limited capabilities, is expected
to sell for $19.50. While the way will be eased to biffer and
better things by the availability of individual blister-packed
add-on units, cost of a full set like the one we had will
probably be $128. Two intermediate sets are also planned.
Still, considering the way the Lectron can put across ideas
(even to our five-year-old, who corrected a mistake of his
father's after only ten minutes with the darn thing), it's got
to be one of the grandest educational toys, ever.
Elmer Carlson
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Last updated June 17, 2006