New Hobby

I've been wanting to pick up a new hobby: Robotics. The problem is that robots are not cheap. The startup costs are quite high. Stephanie has a soldering iron and I've got a box of computer parts that aren't being put to use, but that's about it. I purchased a book about building robots and it has a very good overview of robots but I've run into a snag. I want to learn more about integrated circuits.

One of the projects in this book requires a 74HCT240 IC, which is described as an octal inverting buffer. The book tells me how to solder pins together but it doesn't explain why. I understand boolean logic and I understand the basic of electronics from an The Cartoon Guide to Computers, but I need something more. I copied a few diagrams of simple IC's at Radio Shack but I'm not sure what the schematic means. I'm looking at a diagram for the 741 OP MP Mini DIP IC (Radio Shack # 276-007) and it looks like all it has is one gate connection. The inverted input and uninverted input look like they're bound together to the output, with a coupld of offset nulls, an NC pin, a V+ pin and a V- pin.

I guess I have to learn schematics.