Memories of the games in the war aroused keen interest among VO visitors and … why not continue this topic? This time the story will be devoted to a close to me theme of children's technical creativity, which I was engaged in as a child, and then quite seriously as an adult.
My favorite homemade product that came from my childhood: a vibrating walker from a soap dish.
I want to say right away that it was not I who came up with the principle of the vibrating pass. I first read about it in the magazine "Modelist-Constructor". And models of vibrating passages were also made before me. I just came up with the idea of making a body out of … a soap dish, and putting it not on a piece of fur collar or on bristle wardrobe brushes, but on four toothbrushes. And it turned out to be what we need! Children in circles began to make such a homemade product in 30 minutes and … immediately go to the competition - "race of vibro-walkers"!
As I already wrote, my grandfather Pyotr Konstantinovich Taratynov was in charge of the Penza city council during the war years, was awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Badge of Honor, and after up to 70 years he worked in one of the city's schools as a teacher of labor and geography. At home, therefore, I had a full set of all kinds of instruments, and he began to teach me to work with them very early.
The cover of a book that greatly influenced my destiny.
Well, here the school and there all these skills were useful to me. Although … not everything was there as I would have liked. For example, in elementary school, my "first teacher" (about the dead, either nothing or good) taught us how to sew buttons, and wrap cardboard frames with threads (that's how it was!), And sew boxes from postcards and … that's it! She was not enough for anything else! But even then and, in particular, I personally had books on children's technical creativity with the most simple, but interesting homemade products. But … fuck you! And more often, instead of work, we had mathematics!
The camera from the book "One Hundred Ventures of Two Friends" is made of a matchbox and the most interesting thing was that they could shoot!
From the fifth grade, boys worked separately and girls separately. They learned to cook (I would also not mind, although I learned it myself, I had to!), And at first we had carpentry, then plumbing, then turning and that's it! What did you do? Again, the most primitive. They made birdhouses, stools, broomsticks and rake teeth. Oh, how many of these teeth I sharpened with a file, and then riveted them in a rake. And again, that's all! Although the time was like that when our spaceships plowed the vastness of the universe.
My article from the magazine "Young Technician" (1984)
However, I made models of rockets, but for some reason in a chemistry circle, but I don’t remember so that something “technical” would work at school. However, there was a recreation center them. Kirov and there were such circles. Aircraft modeling, ship modeling and even theatrical … and I was enrolled in all of them, but I did not stay for a long time anywhere. Why? But judge for yourself … I came to the airplane model and let me immediately make a model of a glider from the DOSAAF set. Plywood is brittle, second hand wood, I have no skills. Well … I screwed up the whole set right there! But there is no new one, the limit has been exhausted! Wait a month! So I walked for a month, looked at more successful comrades, and then I successfully screwed up the second set - I hurried to catch up with them! Well, and left, of course.
All the same happened in the shipbuilding. They gave me a model of the "big hunter". A set of pine pieces! Somehow I sharpened them, stuffed nails into the deck - handrails! In general, the "model" came out - "paint it, but throw it away"! Firewood, in a word!
It was the turn of the theater group. Came, checked - "there is data!" and gave me a role in a children's play. At first, just read. And then … rewrite. Rewrite 35 pages! Well, I immediately gave them everything and quickly got out of there. It's not enough for me at the Russian language school …
Here I made this machine, tested it in work and wrote an article about it in the magazine "Modelist-Constructor", where it was appreciated. It is not difficult to make it, but with such a machine, you can already organize a circle at school!
That is, the method of work there was the most primitive, sort of like learning to swim in the 19th century, when it was believed that the best thing was to throw a child into the water and if it floats, it will float. But no, so no! So I did not "float" in any of these circles, and since then I myself led many children's circles, I can responsibly say that there were bad leaders there. Teachers with the letter "G". Children are even lazier than adults, this must be constantly remembered. At the very beginning, they must complete the work in 40 minutes, and so that there is a result both for themselves and … for their parents! There will be no longer attention and interest.
A model of a submarine made of foam on a lathe.
But it was and always will be, that what was bad in one place was compensated by good in another! In those years on Moscow television there was a 30-minute television program "One hundred ventures of two friends", in which the uncle presenter and "two friends" of the boys made various homemade products on the air. Then a book came out on it, and when I bought it, there was no limit to happiness! How I liked her, as if I did it all with them myself! Another TV program was broadcast on Leningrad television and also once a month, and it was called "Operation Sirius-2". It seems that two robots Trix and Mecha flew to our Earth from the star Sirius (one of them previously starred in the movie "Planet of Storms") to get acquainted with our life. And so they got to know, and at the same time with science, technology, production.
There he is a robot from the movie "Planet of Storms" and the TV show "Operation Sirius-2". There was a sportsman inside, that's how!
In short, these two programs had a great impact on me. From matchboxes, I then made a model of an armadillo and "Tom Sawyer's steamer", an airplane "Ilya Muromets" according to the magazine "Young Technician", and from plasticine a diorama with two dinosaurs and primitive people hunting them. This is after reading The Lost World by Conan Doyle. Then there were rather cheap prefabricated models of planes made of plastic from the GDR. Of course, mostly passenger airliners, but among them were Tu-95 and MiG-21 and, for some reason, the Swedish SAAV-35 "Draken". For the whole vacation he glued Potemkin and Aurora together, but did not know that they needed to be painted. On the other hand, what would I paint them with at that time? I glued together the models T-34, KV-85, IS-3, ISU-122 and ISU-152 of the "Ogonek" company and always wondered where BT, T-26, T-35 were … As a result, already in an adult state in 1982 he made all of them himself and at the competition of toys of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League and the Ministry of Legislation received second place, a diploma and … 250 rubles. awards. “But we will not make your toys,” they told me then at the factory. "Why release new toys when new children grow up every year!" Such was their marketing policy and, judging by their today's assortment, it has not changed much over the years.
Manufacturing of the "pneumostart" installation (beginning in the previous material).
So in relation to the "tree" I limited myself to "modeling" rifles with a bolt bolt, and other "homemade products" of this kind only with a sigh looked at the pictures in the magazine "Modelist-Constructor" - oh, I would. But on the other hand, he glued GDR models and Ogrkov models together - and that's good. And then it turned out that after "free education" at the institute I was sent to "work off" in the village for three years. And in addition to history, social studies, geography and the English language, I had to conduct … work, and … a school technical circle. By the way, there was also a labor office with an ax, saws and planes and … that's it! Enough, dear, rural children do not need anything else to teach work skills! "Based on local conditions!" - the director told me, and I had to "go out".
What did I do with the guys there? Oh, the throwing machines of the ancients for the cabinet of history. A model of a yacht that sailed in local waters, a model of a rocket boat (tabletop), all-terrain vehicles-vibrating rovers on brushes with a soap dish hull. And much more. And he did not just do it, but wrote everything down: how, from what, what is the time-consuming work.
And these are the models for starting with the "pneumatic start" installation.
When I returned home four years later, I found that all the places in local universities were occupied, and I did not want to go to school after a rural school, and I went to work at OblSYUT - the Regional Station of Young Technicians. And at the same time he came to local television with a proposal to conduct TV programs for children on technical creativity. "Have you ever led them?" - I was asked on TV. No, never, I replied, but I said I was confident of success. After the village school … In the very first year, my guys received the first in the history of the Penza OblSYuT gold metals of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements for their work, their works got into the pavilion "Young Technicians". They were noted at the All-Union competition "Cosmos", which was then held by the magazine "Modelist-Constructor". And, by the way, how well it was organized. The children were taken to Moscow, settled in pleasant places, well fed, and taken to the "Star City". The jury consisted of "real cosmonauts" and all this, of course, had a very strong effect on the guys. On the SUT, however, I was given 15 DP-10 microelectromotors for a month, and I had to do ONE LESSON! But … the limit! And the accountant was just furious when I brought him checks for soap dishes and toothbrushes. "Don't you need shaving cream ?!" It was, of course, impossible to work like that. Then I arranged, probably, the first parents' meeting in the history of this organization and said: if you want profanity, everything will remain as it is. If you want business - pay for everything yourself, and the children will bring you your money in the form of homemade products! And to the credit of the parents, they understood everything, because they saw the result. Since then, I have had no problems either with motors or with soap dishes, but … if OBLONO had found out about this, I would have had a lot of troubles. After all, our mugs were free!
A highlight of the design: the pressure boosting clutch.
I constantly “dragged” my fellows-members on TV, and there were cycles of programs one after another: “Let's make toys”, “Studio UT”, “The stars are calling!”, “For children-inventors”. Even when I was in graduate school from 1985 to 1988, the programs continued on TV Kuibyshev (Samara) under the name "School Country Workshop". All scenarios were “stored”, after which books began to be published one after the other: “From everything at hand” (Minsk, “Polymya”, 1987), “When the lessons are done” (Minsk, “Polymya”, 1990 g.), "For those who love to tinker" (Moscow, "Education", 1991). The fourth was also written: "Models for every taste." But her typing at the publishing house was scattered in 1993 due to economic difficulties in the country.
Some say that "here it was before, but now." As before, I wrote. And as now, I also know, because now I help to do all the same already at the school where my granddaughter studies. And … everything is there, in principle. The same circles, including free ones, rallies, "days of technical creativity of schoolchildren." What well? There are no frank "firewood" like those that were called creativity in my childhood. But now robots are assembled from a set of ready-made parts in a circle and they say: "creativity"! No, this is not creativity. Creativity - when you also need to cut a little, do something with your own hands. It became … even more show and gratitude to “our esteemed sponsors”. But the children have nothing to compare with, they are not allowed to saw and rivet at home, so they are happy about that too!
And here's another thing that I don't like at all. When my daughter went to first grade in 1982, I went to lead a circle at her school. And they, according to my methodology and my books, did everything in the ratio of 80 to 20. That is, 80 succeeded, and 20 did it somehow. Now, when the same thing happened in my granddaughter's class, the proportion has turned upside down. What children did then in the first grade, now they have mastered only in the second. 20 do it somehow, 80 do nothing at all, although they try. I have not changed (in terms of skills), the methodology has not changed. This means that the children have changed, and not for the better. With their studies, they are still at the very least cope. But working with your hands and at the same time with your head is very difficult for most!
By the way, there are many retired officers, engineers, and designers at the VO. What's the use of complaining that "we were different, but now they are …" Why don't they take and go to schools to lead the same technical circles, teach from the first or second grade to work with paper, cardboard, self-hardening plastics? After all, now everything is there, and parents with money will not refuse - they find 1500 rubles each. for dance costumes? But how many of their children will become professional dancers? And so they would be convinced, and their children, too, that skillful hands also develop brains, and if your hands are friends with your head, then this is always and everywhere true and good earnings!
But such an improvement to the "pneumostart" is offered on the Internet. The main thing here is "to suddenly exhale a lot of air", which is achieved not by a pump, but by the weight of the child himself!
Colored drawings by A. Sheps.
