Remembering the S-Dec Solderless Breadboard

During the 1970s and my earliest years of hobby electronics, the idea of prototyping a circuit without actually soldering any components together was quite a thorny one. The ‘breadboard’ idea alluded to vintage principles of building circuits on slabs of wood, soldering wires to nails hammered into the ‘breadboard’, chopping and changing them as needed until the circuit was perfected.

This was quite in order given that parts were large and unwieldy, but come the advent of smaller components, the transistor and then integrated circuits in the 1970s, a new concept of ‘solderless breadboards’ was born.

The novel idea was to mount spring contact strips in blocks, which would allow component leads and wires to be inserted or moved around as the circuit developed. Only once a fully working circuit had been finalised, would it then be transferred to Veroboard or a printed circuit board.

Solderless breadboard wiper contacts [click to see]My hobbyist years will forever be indebted to the S-Dec solderless breadboard, the first of its kind in Britain. It was a 4½” long block intended for developing simple circuits using discrete components – no transistors or i.c.s. here.  It had 14 rows of five gold-plated wipers, each location numbered 1-70.  A dovetail design enabled larger circuits to be built and a slot-in panel could carry switches or potentiometers. I used to solder copper wires to transistors like the Ferranti ZTX300, before inserting them into the S-Dec.

^ An original T-Dec solderless breadboard with DIL i.c. carrier [click to see]This product got me a long way as a teenager, and then, with dual-in-line integrated circuits appeared on the scene, the new T-Dec was produced which had a 16-pin DIL carrier, more interconnecting strips and more sockets, to enable slightly more complex circuits to be prototyped.  I used one extensively during my halcyon days as an electronics hobbyist.

Original 1971 advert for S-Dec & T-Dec breadboardsMy S-Dec is stamped ‘A RODEN Product’ and I eventully found an advert in August 1984 Hobby Electronics magazine that describes 'Roden S-Dec'. Roden Products were at Daventry.

Roden S-Dec ad 1984 [click to see]An earlier advert from more than half a century ago, 1971, mentions S.D.C. Electronics (Sales) Ltd., (is that where S-Dec came from, I wonder? The initials of its founder?) and I found the original location 34 Arkwright Road in Runcorn is now a nondescript industrial estate, or maybe the original unit was demolished. See Google Maps at  https://goo.gl/maps/CsD7tNwSYkvaFqMNA

I found an advert in a 'British Advertising Supplement' of the IEEE journal of January 1970 showing a US distributor for the DeC solderless breadboard. S.D.C. were later listed in the London Gazette in 1976 so sadly must have been dissolved or gone into liquidation.

DeC Solderless Breadboards advert for the USA, 1970After that, into the 1990s, excitement in hobby electronics builds and more solderless breadboards arrived including the ‘VeroBloc’ that I used in the Teach-In 93 Mini Lab, the very similar ‘EuroBreadBoard’ and finally the typical i.c.-compatible solderless breadboard that we see everywhere today. They have hundreds if not thousands of points and enable highly complex circuits to be built, using solid jumper wires.

You can buy solderless breadboard kits and link wires on Amazon such as the typical sample below:

^ Solderless breadboard complete kit  with link wires

 

^ Link kit, 840 pcs 2-125mm Jumper Wires kit 

• I discussed more about my early days of electronics including the S-Dec at http://alanwinstanley.squarespace.com/hobby-electronics/2012/3/14/interview-part-2-a-voyage-on-veroboard.html
• Two Verobloc solderless breadboards were used in our Mini Lab for Teach-In 93, see http://alanwinstanley.squarespace.com/hobby-electronics/2014/10/28/interview-part-6-a-labour-of-love.html
• An interesting forum discussion on the S-Dec, T-Dec and u-Dec was found here: https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=140460

What are your memories of early circuit prototyping? You're welcome to leave comments below.