As a budding ham and paleo-geek, I was naturally drawn to the idea of building an automatic Morse Code sender instead of, you know, actually learning to do it competently with a straight key! This was not my design, though it had a number of modifications; it ended up mounted on the side of my…

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From the archives, here is my father — Edward Roberts, second from right — with two of the science fair winners along with his associates from the Louisville Engineering and Scientific Societies Council, which hosted the science fair. The students featured are Larry Goad of Waggener High School, and David Church. The project shown is…

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This wonderful relic from the dawn of speech synthesis is a 2-minute recording from Bell Laboratories, first published in 1962, showcasing the work of John L. Kelly and Louis J. Gerstman for the Visual and Acoustics Research Department.  I acquired this 45 RPM soundsheet in 1966, in the 9th grade, when I began working on…

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Steven K. Roberts September 25, 1965 This is just one of those studio shots, probably taken at someplace boring like Sears in the Mall, showing the birthday boy with parents Edward and Phyllis. We were living in Jeffersontown, Kentucky – a suburb of Louisville, and I had just spent a few weeks at Camp Mountain…

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Combo Bolens Mowing Rig – 1965 – Jeffersontown, Kentucky from Steven K Roberts. This little video is also here in my YouTube channel, where it is more convenient to share. When I was a kid in Kentucky, we had 5½ acres… and it was pretty much my responsibility to keep it all mowed. Our Bolens…

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My father, Ed Roberts, was an avid sailor for many years before I came along, and only after his passing did I discover the extent to which this permeated his life. As a child, I picked up a bit of nautical lore and sensed the allure on family vacations, but I didn’t really learn to…

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My father (Ed Roberts, at left) was director of the Louisville Regional Science Fair in the 1960s, and this delightful photo is from his archives. The robot was named Andrew, and his builder, Ed Ramsey (center), went to school at Trinity, then went on to study electrical engineering at Purdue. The robot had magnetic hands and a tape-recorder…

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This was my third science fair project… in 8th grade. The full title was The Harmonograph’s Lissajous Curves Duplicated by Servomechanisms, and it won first place at Louisville Country Day School (General Division) as well as first place in the Kentucky State Science Fair (Junior Division). The only photo of the machine that remains is…

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I have often joked over the years that I never outgrew science fairs… showing off the various technomadic machines at trade shows and other events was eerily reminiscent of those early years, complete with passion, demo effects, marketing, and procrastination followed by despair. I credit science fairs with giving me a lifelong project-oriented perspective, and…

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This is a throwback to 5th grade… my first science fair project, setting the tone for the next six years during which these were the only academic things that mattered. This AC induction magnet was not my design, but the fabrication and tinkering was hugely educational… I disassembled a transformer to harvest the laminations, then…

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