[kpgraham]

In my senior year of high school (1968-69) Mike Sivy (Yes that Michael Sivy) and I tried to build some components of a digital computer out of military surplus relays. We took the bus and the subway down to Canal Street in NYC and bought a box of large 24 volt relays. We designed a counter and we were able to get some parts working. It took 5 relays for each part, which Sivy was able to drop down to 4 by using a diode. I always thought that the diode was cheating and by using it we lost the purity of the concept, but we had a limited number of relays and we wanted to count to 8. One of our problems was hysteresis and at various times the whole thing would start sparking and chattering like crazy. I remember trying to explain what we did to parents that wandered into the physics lab in the school's open house. They were more impressed with the giant "jabob's ladder" we built that eventually set the lab's window moulding on fire.