The 555 really was cool. I remember being in middle school way back in the day working with 555's. At that time, I had trouble reading resistance values without resorting to a color reference chart, but the 555 I knew inside and out.
When you think about it, a design would have to be 'Uber-Elegant' to have a middle school kid be able to understand it like that. For the time, I think it was.
(As an aside, I can remember going ballistic on one of my friends who soldered one to a board. I would only use them on breadboards because I thought they were too 'valuable'. LOL! Money in middle school terms!)
When those white breadboards came out that allowed you to wire entire circuits with no soldering at all it changed my life. Until then we would wire wrap, or solder to pieces of copper wire used as posts stuck in, erm, breadboard. chips always went into a socket holder whose leads were then soldered to the breadboard (or wire-wrapped).
My first was a HeathKit digital electronics course which contained power supplies, sources of +5/0 V, and leds to read output.
When you think about it, a design would have to be 'Uber-Elegant' to have a middle school kid be able to understand it like that. For the time, I think it was.
(As an aside, I can remember going ballistic on one of my friends who soldered one to a board. I would only use them on breadboards because I thought they were too 'valuable'. LOL! Money in middle school terms!)
I LOVED those 555's. Good times.