I was invited to talk to a group of six-graders on what influenced me when I was their age, to launch me on the path I followed through life. This gave me an excuse to reflect on what stands out now as important then.

In hindsight, I think there were three things: I had a few simple toys which created an itch to know why, the space program and science fiction books and shows.

My mother used to sew a lot. She had this small but powerful magnet she would use to pick up pins. I was fascinated by it. I noticed it would pick up some pins, but not others. Why? How did it work?

She also had a magnifying glass she would use to check her sewing. I was drawn to how it was able to magnify objects. When I asked her, how did it work, she said it was special kind of glass, but I knew she didn’t have a clue.

I played with these two objects endlessly when I was nine years old. I wanted to know how and why they did their tricks.

Then my god father, Leo, who worked at Sperry Gyroscope, showed me a model gyroscope. Once spinning, it has got to be the most bizarre mechanical device ever. It behaves counter-intuitively. The spin axis of the rotor never moves, however the frame is rotated. If you push on the spinning axis, it rotates 90 degrees to the direction of motion. Why does it do this?

These three devices started me on my path to question and created that thirst to want to know why. It is an itch I am still scratching.

Then came the space program around this time. Some kids have posters of sports stars on their walls. I had pictures of astronauts, like Ed White, in a space walk, on my walls. I wrote away to NASA and got back 8 x 12 inch glossy photos of rocket launches, astronauts in space and space capsules parachuting to the ocean. I sat transfixed in seventh grade, watching the first man walk on the moon.

To this day, I still keep pictures of space ships on my wall.

The last important influence in my early years was a book my fifth grade teacher read us in class, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. I was hooked on tesseracts and the possibility of warping space time to travel to the stars.

This was quickly followed by Robert Heinlein’s Have Space Suit Will Travel. It was the first science fiction book I can remember reading myself. I still remember the day I discovered the science fiction section of our local public library and pulled this book from the shelf.

I then proceeded to read every science fiction book in the library and many more since then.

I inhaled Star Trek and every other science fiction show and movie in the 1960’s and 1970’s in parallel with my science explorations. Even my first science fiction novel, Shadow Engineer, shows an influence in its themes from these two books.

When I look back now that I am 55, a successful physicist in the electronics industry, author of seven technical books and one science fiction book, I see that I have been trying to scratch that same itch to know why, that started when I was nine years old.