Course: Electronics – for Complete Beginners

Section 1: Introduction
Lecture 1: Getting Acquainted

Getting Acquainted
Greetings! Thank you for enrolling in the
course, and welcome to my virtual
classroom!
Why am I here? — Who is this course for
anyway?
Maybe you’re retired and hoping to fend
off dementia by keeping that muscle
between your ears healthy?
That’s great! Learning forces the brain to
build new synapses to replace those crusty
old nerve connections. If you’re curious
about electronics, we’re going to have an
interesting and fun time together. Beats the
heck out of playing bingo for costume
jewelry!
Maybe you’re a high school or college
student in need to some extra help? You’ve
come to the right place — I’m your eager
private tutor, and I work very inexpensively!
Or maybe you’re in the work force, hoping
to pick up some knowledge and skills that
might lead to something bigger and better
career-wise.
If that’s who you are, you’re exactly the
person that I’ve created this course for, and
I’m really happy that you’re here listening to
me right now.
Whatever the case, thank you for choosing
my course in basic electronics!
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Electronics is now found everywhere! In
commerce, communications, transportation,
entertainment, medicine, space, weapons …
even home appliances and toys!
Opportunities in electronics abound and
are highly varied, not just for engineers, but
also for technicians.
 Meanwhile, business in this country has
changed, much to the disadvantage of the
unskilled worker.
In the good old days, there were three
types of companies … the three Ps…
• people oriented,
• product oriented, and
• profit oriented.

Product oriented companies focused on

excellence in whatever they produced — as
in “We make the best damned (whatever) in
the business!”
Heinz, the famous canners of ketchup and
pickles, used say that their business was “To
do a common thing uncommonly well.”
Product oriented companies were usually
also usually people oriented, attributing their
success to the quality of their people.
And usually, it worked the other way
around too: a people oriented company
being, by nature, product oriented.
 The last company that I worked for was a
privately-held corporation. The owner had a
patriarchal streak in him, and took pride in
being able to provide a livelihood for a few
hundred families.
Rather than carefully evaluating resumes,
he just hired people that he liked, and who
he believed had potential.
He was very seldom wrong in his
judgment about people.
His motto was a play on words: he’d say
“A company is only as good as the people it
keeps.”
All this led to a company spirit that tended
to bring out the best in everyone, and that
was reflected in the products we produced.
We quickly became a leader in our
industry.
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And then there are the profit oriented
companies, where the whole thing is about
ROI — return on investment; the “bottom
line.”
If they’re into computers, they’d be just as
happy making popcorn if that seemed likely
to be more profitable.
Profit oriented companies concentrate on
cost items; the three Ms …
• money,
• material, and
• manpower.

They are always focused on getting these

three components of their business plan at
the lowest possible price.
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Most businesses of any significant size are
now purely profit oriented. This has led to
the 99% vs. 1% distribution of wealth that
we hear so much about, leaving what’s left
of the middle class as an “endangered
species.”
 If you’re in the unskilled labor category,
your chances of having a life as affluent and
comfortable as your middle class ancestors
are really slim. It’s all about supply and
demand, and as far as unskilled labor is
concerned, it’s always buyers’ market —
meaning that employers can get as much of
it as they need for little more than whatever
the statutory minimum wage happens to be.
Right now, that’s usually like $8 to $12 an
hour.
Even on a full-time basis, that falls well
below the poverty level!
The key to getting out of that hopeless
pool and increasing your earning potential is
to get yourself into a place where supply
doesn’t exceed demand. That means
learning some special skill that employers
have to pay more for, since it’s less
commonly available.
In electronics, for example, if you’re a
temp working on the assembly line for
peanuts, think about going for a better job as
a technician in the test lab, quality control,
or the research and development division.
As mentioned before, there are all sorts of
applications in electronics, and many of
them differ so much that you’ll very likely
wind up specializing narrowly in one
particular technology.
But whatever your specialty is going to be,
its foundation will always be the
fundamentals.
Learning the basic stuff will always have
to be your first step in becoming
knowledgeable and qualified in whatever
field of electronics you might choose.
So if a career in electronics is your game
right now, you’re at the right place. This is
the starting line.
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You can use the Q&A panel to let
everyone know why you’re here, and what
you hope to get out of the course.
 But, whatever the reason — for something
interesting and fun to do, for some extra
help with a school or college class, or
advancement in your career — I’m really
pleased to be part of it.
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