On Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 2:03:32 PM UTC-7, Cursitor Doom wrote:
On Tue, 13 Jun 2017 13:45:40 -0700, tabbypurr wrote:

I'd first be mindful of mechanical damage from doing that. When was the
book written? Germanium?

Haha! I think even those old germanium diodes would easily cope with a
four foot fall!

Oh, no; a point contact diode can easily jar out of spec. There was even
an old device (the 'coherer') which reformed a rectifying contact by
motorized shaking during normal operation.