Thanks for your time in advance. Pretty exciting these days that we can make stuff by ourselves.
I'm not sure where you've been - but we've always been able to "make things by ourselves". To be honest, I'm not sure how you could believe otherwise.
If you're implying, instead, that the whole "DIY electronics" culture is something new, I can guarantee you it isn't. I can show you old magazines from the early part of the 20th century detailing how to build radios and other such early electronic devices. Prior to that, it was a common thing (and many books were written) to DIY a large variety of objects for the house and play.
Post-WW2 is where things really sped up - tons of magazines appeared (or got a boost - like in the case of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, for instance) that appealed to the DIY'er. Everything from building model train sets, radios, alarms, other such things - to an entire house, boat, or car (yes - build your own car - including the engine) - all of these things were very popular, starting in the mid to late 1940s.
Early microcomputers were almost exclusively projects that appeared in the pages of magazines (the Altair 8800 being the most famous). There were also plenty of early robotics projects and experimenters back then as well (TAB Books were the most famous of the publishers back then, catering to such electronics and DIY project builders - they were eventually absorbed into McGraw-Hill).
Electronics parts and supplies were very easy to get back then, and not really too expensive (test equipment, though - beyond a multimeter - stayed expensive for a long time).
Maybe you mean something else, though?