24 when I was about 15 and living in
Odessa in the Soviet Union. There was a lot of interest in wireless
and two magazines were published in Russia which dealt mainly with the
construction of receivers. My interest was first aroused when a
friend of mine at school proudly showed me something he had just made.
It was, he told me, a variable capacitor and he was going to use it to
make a radio receiver. The contraption was enormous by today's
standards and must have weighed about half a kilo. My friend said it
had a capacity of 250 micro-micro farads, which meant absolutely
nothing to me at the time.

"When he completed his receiver I became very interested and
decided I would build one too. But materials were hard to find and
very expensive. Two items one had to buy: valves and headphones.

"I asked my friend where he had found the sheet metal to make the
plates of the capacitor. He took me to a row of small shops which had
a metal-faced ledge below the shop window. The metal was thin and
seemed easy enough to remove. We sat on the ledge for a while and
when the coast was clear we tore away a section and ran like mad.
Later I ruined a pair of my mother's dressmaking scissors cutting out
the plates. I used rings of some thick copper wire to space the
plates but I could not drill holes in the plates for the spindle so a
friend did that for me. I used about 15 plates and to this day I have
no idea what the capacity of the finished capacitor was. Some small
items for the receiver could be found in a little shop owned by an old
man who charged exorbitant prices, so I decided I must go to Moscow
for the valve and a single headphone that I needed.

"But Moscow was three days and two nights away by train, and it
was the middle of winter. So what, you may ask. Like many others I
had to travel on the roof of a goods waggon. I took with me a loaf of
bread, a piece of cheese and two hard-boiled eggs. My father said I
must be mad but he gave me some spending money and his blessing.

"I had eaten my food by the end of the second day so when we
stopped at Brensk which is famous for its 'piroushki' I decided to try
them. They were kept warm in large metal tins ready for the arrival
of the train. There were seven varieties and I had one made with
liver and a savoury sauce.

"When I arrived in Moscow I went to see the Greek ambassador as I
was carrying a letter of introduction from my father who was