Mims Books
Valorie Carlee
The later Mini-notebook series were produced using similar techniques, although this time mercifully with a mechanical pencil. Each volume took about three weeks to produce, including designing each circuit and building it four times to make sure it worked.
Also every truly gifted engineer and true genuis I have met were self taught. Colledge and education have devolved into much less than they used to be. Technology and information are drivers of innovation not the universities.
I agree about fail-often and education. Inventor types are often surprised at how many serious advancements start as a mathematical abstraction on scrap paper or whatever is handy on a ferry ride. Like the operational amplifier, regeneration and heterodyne in radio, DSP, SDR, etc.
I mean, I know that solar cell are basically photo diodes, but they share the same technology does nto mean they are used the same way and have the same for factor, you are not going to use a photo diode to generate current for powering a device, nor use a solar cell to detect light.
The technology has changed over the years. The old solar cell was not like a modern silicon based solar cell. It was a Cadmium based photo voltaic cell that was so inefficient that it was more often used as a light detector rather than a power source.
I had the same thought at first, but then reminded myself that Cds cells are really photo resistors and not photo diodes, though they were generally used to control a diode in a light switching application.
Possibly, RB was referring to selenium photocells, which DO produce electric current like silicon photocells and photodiodes do. The only cadmium devices I am aware of are cadmium sulfide, which are photoresistors, not photodiodes.
They really are not copyrighted.
If you check copyright law, simply reformatting known or public knowledge is not protected. Copyright requires a substantial new or original thought. The circuit diagrams was a simple collation of existing circuit diagrams!
I have them all around here somewhere. Honestly they should be required materials for any EE program. Take a month and build every circuit no matter how overly simple and old they teach real fundamentals.
Not sure if I still have it, but I remember that first edition notebook back when integrated circuits were new and you could go down to radio shack and buy all kinds of cool stuff including tube amplifiers. The copy I had was bright yellow. Learned a lot from Forest Mims III notebooks. Glad to see he is getting some credit for all the inspiration his work created.
I built my first code practice oscillator using the 555 circuit in the book and parts I bought at the local, now defunct in Canada, Radio Shack. I think it was 1976 when he generously began and long and and happy relationship with me. Thanks Forest.
Bought these when I was a kid, still have them. But they never made any sense to me. Lots of circuit diagrams, but no explanation whatsoever of what each circuit component did, why the values were chosen, etc. Just a little bit of general theory and a lot of diagrams. Absolutely zero information on how to design your own circuits.
Everybody else seems to think they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. I did like the looks of the diagrams and hand lettering. But I guess you had to be a lot smarter than me to actually learn anything from them.
I grew up with f.mims and many others; I was a sponge for information, I would get it wherever I could. I also agree with the comment about Don Lancaster and snake oil. Some of his projects were from another planet.
I found a discouraging new item some years ago, in which a doomsday virus eugenics-promoting U-texas professor had a big public argument with Mimms over the topic of overpopulation, with Mimms basically getting browbeaten in front of a large technical audience for having the audacity to suggest overpopulation may be a myth, or dependent on a consumption-paradigm exploitative of resources and citizens.
I had the Engineers Notebook when I was younger too. Gave me more than one idea for things I never did have the time or money to make. (including at least one project that would have featured a microprocessor back when the microprocessors listed in the catalogs were things like the Z80 rather than the easy-to-use/easy-to-program microcontrollers of today). Then I ended up shifting away from electronics to focus more on my computer programming hobby (more than anything else I think the fact that computer programming was a much cheaper hobby than electronics is probably why I ended up sticking with that)
Thank you! Great flash back story. I know I had them all plus a yellow phone book sized catalog of circuits that probably came from RS also.
Unfortunatly just this past summer it all went to the dump after finding the entire collection soaked from a roof leak.
But the great memories or learning before the internet will always be with me!
So true. Every attempt I made to shop at radio shack resulted in a sales droid trying to sell me for a higher price a cell phone that I could buy cheaper elsewhere. They would be disappointed when I told them I was there for parts even when I often would spend more on parts than the price of the phone they were trying to push.
I think RS saw the error of their ways toward the end, but it was too late. My local RS had a full stock of Arduino products, as well as a good variety of project boxes, battery holders, and several cabinets of drawers full of components, switches, and connectors. Once again I could walk into a store with a parts list and walk out with everything you needed to complete a weekend project. Overnight shipping is what REALLY killed Radio Shack.
Ive been collecting Mr. Mims books, since I was able afford them an able to get hold of the atari, altair and the trash80 had to use 8 bit assembler code to convert them to cp/m, my uncle got them for me and i started coding back then, found my first Mims book and collected almost all of them the last 55 years :), at least it feels that long ago.
Mims has no formal academic training in science,[2] but still went on to have a successful career as a science author, researcher, lecturer and syndicated columnist. His series of hand-lettered and illustrated electronics books sold over 7.5 million copies and he is widely regarded as one of the world's most prolific citizen scientists.[3] Mims does scientific studies in many fields using instruments he designs and makes and his scientific papers have been published in many peer-reviewed journals, often with professional scientists as co-authors. Much of his research deals with ecology, atmospheric science and environmental science. A simple instrument he developed to measure the ozone layer earned him a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1993. In December 2008, Discover named Mims one of the "50 Best Brains in Science."[4]
Mims was interested in science at an early age, and he built an analog computer as a high school science fair project in 1960. While memorizing his Latin class vocabulary words, Mims conceived a computer that could translate twenty words from one language to another. The input was six potentiometers (variable resistors) each having a dial with 26 letters. Entering the first six letters of the word on the potentiometers set a total electrical resistance. The memory of known words was a bank of 20 screwdriver-adjustable trimmer resistors. (Mims later referred to this as "Screwdriver-Programmable Read Only Memory", SPROM.) The memory was searched by a motor driven switch that compared the resistance of the input word with each memory resistor. When a match was found the motor would stop and one of 20 output lamps would be on. This was not a practical language translator, but it was an impressive science fair project for the early 1960s. Mims wrote an article for the December 1987 issue of Modern Electronics describing his homebrew analog computer complete with schematics and photographs.[12]
Mims entered Texas A&M University in the fall of 1962 as a physics major. The mathematics courses convinced him to major in liberal arts. He graduated in 1966, with a major in government with minors in English and history.[13]
Mims pursued his electronics avocation while at A&M. His great-grandfather was blind, and this led Mims to create a travel aid for the blind. This device was similar to RADAR, except it used the newly developed infrared-emitting diode to send intense pulses of light that reflected from obstacles. The returned light was converted to an audio tone that increased in amplitude as the distance to the obstacles was reduced. The infrared diodes had just been introduced by Texas Instruments in 1965, and sold for $365 each. Mims visited Dr. Edwin Bonin of Texas Instruments and explained his project. After reviewing the finished design, Dr. Bonin sent Mims three infrared-emitting diodes.[11]
Mims arranged to exhibit his prototype at the annual Texas Medical Association convention held in Austin in April 1966. Wearing his Texas A&M Corps of Cadets uniform, Mims demonstrated his "electronic eyes" to the convention attendees. Mims and his device were widely reported in Texas newspapers. The San Antonio Light wrote, "Although a political science major at A&M, Mims's second interest obviously is 'science and inventing things.'"[14] Mims would continue to improve this device over the next several years. Popular Mechanics described how the device would fit on a pair of eyeglasses in August 1972[15]
After graduating from Texas A&M in 1966, Mims became a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, Vietnam as an intelligence officer in early 1967. Mims had been interested in model rocketry since high school and brought a supply of rockets to Vietnam. He used a nearby horse racing track as a launch site to test his rocket guidance systems. After an Army helicopter gunship came to check out the rocket launches, Mims learned to notify military authorities before launching rockets at the race track. A night launch from the roof of his apartment house caused an alert at Tan Son Nhut Air Base.[16] Mims' rocket exploits were reported in the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.[17]
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