“Circuit bending started about 10 years ago when a geographically diverse group of basement tinkerers began to experiment with soldering guns and the cast-aside first-generation electronic Christmas gifts of their childhood. They discovered that if you pop the top off anything that has a simple circuit board and makes a sound — an ’80s-era talking doll, for instance — you can hot-wire it and produce squawks that the manufacturer never had in mind, squawks that in some cases had never before been heard. United by the Internet, circuit benders started sharing notes and trading pointers, and now they’re a certified subculture.”