When I was in third grade, back around 1959, they pulled me out of class and asked me if I would like to go to Mrs. Spencer's Workshop for part of each day. This was a special class for bored and restless kids where we could work on projects of our own.

I started out drawing maps of freeway interchanges. A new freeway had just come through town (this was a very new thing at the time) and I was fascinated by the interchanges. I made sketches of all the ones between Eugene and Portland, and then I looked for something new to do.

I had been playing with electrical circuits for a while, so naturally I wanted to make a printed circuit board for a science fair project.

I didn't have one of those fancy phenolic sheets with copper on one side, but I figured I could just use a sheet of copper and put electrical tape on both sides to act as resist for the traces, and then mount the whole thing on a wooden board when done.

It would be a circuit, on a board, etched like a real printed circuit. So I thought that counted as a printed circuit board.

I asked Mrs. Spencer if she could get me a copper sheet and some electrical tape, along with a tank of nitric acid. And she did!

I taped up the sheet, dunked it in the nitric acid, and watched the unprotected parts dissolve away. And then I pulled the remaining circuit out of the acid, rinsed it off, peeled off the tape, and mounted it on my board.

Of course we didn't need eye protection or anything fancy like that back in those days.

And the circuit worked the first time! It may have been the first and last circuit or program where I had such good luck.

It was the most awesomest day at school ever!