People throw away a lot of technology these days: old printers, computers, weird office machines, technical equipment, and even a lot of military stuff. There has always been a big market for this surplus technology, especially among young and/or poorer makers and those who are just starting out. This market became evident in Ivrea, where we developed Arduino. The city used to be the headquarters of the Olivetti company. They had been making computers since the 1960s; in the mid 1990s, they threw everything away in junkyards in the area. These are full of computer parts, electronic components, and weird devices of all kinds. We spent countless hours there, buying all sorts of contraptions for a few euros and adapting them into our prototypes. When you can buy a thousand loudspeakers for very little money, you’re bound to come up with some idea in the end. Accumulate junk and go through it before starting to build something from scratch.
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