Jan 6, 2018 - 1954 Boy First Book Of Radio Electronics Morgan Pdf Merge. An Old Satellite Dish Found on Google Maps Is Becoming West Africa's First. The boys first book of radio and electronics / Alfred Morgan. Indeks Page: Indeks: hlm. Information: xv, 488 hlm. Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120. The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics. The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics appeared in 1954. THE BOYS FIRST BOOK RADIO and ELECTRONICS ALFRED MORGAN 1954 0.
I was surfing the web looking for interesting projects the other day when I ran into SkyKing’s. He mentioned that they were “Alfred P. Morgan-style” and that brought back a flood of memories about a man who introduced a whole generation to electronics and radio.
Morgan was born in 1889 and in the early part of the twentieth century, he was excited to build and fly an airplane. Apparently, there wasn’t a successful flight. However, he eventually succeeded and wrote his first book: “How to Build a 20-foot Bi-Plane Glider.” In 1910, he and a partner formed the Adams Morgan company to distribute radio construction kits. We probably wouldn’t remember Morgan for his airplanes, but we do recognize him for his work with radio. By 1913, he published a book “The Boy Electrician” which covered the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism (at a time when these subjects were far more mysterious than they are today).
Morgan predicted the hacker in the preface to the 1947 edition. After describing how a boy was frustrated that his model train automated to the point that he had nothing actually to do, Morgan observed: The prime instinct of almost any boy at play is to make and to create. He will make things of such materials as he has at hand, and use the whole force of dream and fancy to create something out of nothing. Of course, we know this applies to girls too, but Morgan wrote this in 1913, so you have to fill in the blanks. I think we can all identify with that sentiment, though. However, Morgan’s best-remembered books were from the 1950’s and 1960’s. The first one was titled “The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics.” You can guess the successive titles (just replace the word “First”).
The first book covered some basics about how Hertz performed experiments and theory but aimed at young people. Morgan was adept at making the topics accessible. He’d studied at MIT, so he knew the complexities of the subject, but he also knew his audience. The books talked about subjects of interest at the time like how “underwater sounds” (SONAR) helped to win World War II. Chapter 5 and beyond of the book, however, was the part that got dog-eared from constant examination.
Here’s the start of Chapter 5: For less than one dollar you can buy a marvelous scientific device–namely a “tube” for a radio receiver. This inexpensive creation of scientific research does its work with a precision and a certainty that are astonishing. If you were a kid who’d stared into the holes at the back of your family TV and saw those glowing thing inside, this chapter was a revelation. Chapter 6 was even more practical.
It covered schematic symbols and the resistor color code. That chapter laid the groundwork for what every reader wanted: construction plans! Chapter 7 showed how to make a detector (basically a diode) out of some scrap material and iron pyrite, galena or silicon (see right). After that, it is a short trip to radio receivers that became progressively more complex. The projects were well described, with detailed plans and notes and–most importantly–used parts you could obtain.
The book didn’t have just radio projects. Chapter 10 contains an audio frequency amplifier (so you could put your radio’s signals out on a speaker). There’s also chapters on antennas and Morse code. The section on soldering is informative, but I’d hate to handle SMD with Morgan’s choice of irons (see left). Building things in those days was a lot more artistic than most projects are today.
Look at that crystal radio layout above, the picture of SkyKing’s radio above that, or you can see a few Morgan builds in kc9kep’s video, below. You constructed projects on wood or a steel chassis. You did wiring by hand.
You could not get amplifiers, product detectors, and mixers as functional blocks in an IC containing 100s of transistors. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to romanticize the era. I like building complex things out of ICs on PCBs and making things that would have amazed Morgan and his contemporaries. Imagine meeting Morgan in 1950 and telling him that your latest project had thousands of transistors (most of them, of course, bundled in an Arduino; even an old RCA 1802 had 5,000 transistors inside). What I do wonder, though, is how does a budding electronic experimenter get this kind of start today? Sure, it is easier than ever to slap together some very complicated projects.
But where are the simple projects you could slap together from stuff you found in the garage? (Well, ok, you don’t want to use my garage for that example, but you know what I mean.) Even an LED blinker today is likely to have a microcontroller in it. That’s a good thing, too, but maybe you’d learn more by building a relaxation oscillator.
Sure, we’d never do that in a real project. But there’s some merit to having starter projects to–well–get started. So here’s the challenge: What’s your ideal beginner’s project? That is if a middle school kid came to you and said “Where do I start?” what project would you have her do and why?
Hackaday is, of course, an excellent resource even if many of the projects are not suitable for a beginner. There are, though, to. What other sites or books would you send our hypothetical student? Perhaps a bigger challenge is what project will you create for that target audience (and, maybe, post them on Hackaday.io)? Posted in, Tagged, Post navigation.
I suspect that if you grew up with Mims you wouldn’t have found these books all that useful. I grew up in a small town in the 80s and early 90s.
I don’t remember if I read Morgan’s books specifically or just ones like it. I read everything I could find in our local library, the school library and the library one town over. It was all out of date even then and this stuff looks familiar. I’m sure it was great in it’s time but the problem was that they would say things like. ‘just pop down into your basement and sift through your coal pile for a piece of galena’, or ‘head over to the local drug store and pick up a vacuum tube’. Yeah what is coal?
Pre-internet if you didn’t live in a big city then if you couldn’t find it in the local Rat Shack it didn’t exist. Even the Mims books weren’t that great because that chain was already losing it’s way and didn’t always carry everything needed to build Mim’s projects anymore.
Today these vintage books are a whole lot more interesting than before because you can just pick up those esoteric pieces off of eBay and rock like it’s 1932. I spent some time teaching a young lady (grade school) the basic of electronics. The first project we did was a MintyBoost, more to teach her how to solder than to teach theory. From there we went to an LED cube and worked on 3D printing after that. Beginner projects should have a high cool factor, something that can be shown off and actually used from day to day.
LED cubes with animations over simple blinkies. Stuff that makes sounds. I remember a joke project I think was called the cricket. Just two 555 timers but connected to a photosensitive resister so it only chirped when the lights were out, making it more difficult to find.
Complexity can be conquered by using modules. A bluetooth module is complex but using one to build a bluetooth speaker is a good beginner project. Once they get a taste of the simple stuff they’ll be interested enough to learn the complex stuff.
IEEE Spectrum has a nice article about Alfred Morgan and his influence on aspiring engineers and technicians. When I was about 13, I sure enjoyed reading about how to make a crystal set and a one-tube radio (with a 1G4 or 1H4 tube).
Within a few years, I got my ham license, and less than 10 years later, I earned my BSEE. I've been an IEEE member for decades and am glad they chose to recognize an author who had such a positive effect on so many lives.
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The Homebrew Radios section of this forum frequently has posts about radios built to the old Alfred P. Morgan specs. Origin of the term 'Elmer' The term 'Elmer'-meaning someone who provides personal guidance and assistance to would-be hams-first appeared in QST in a March 1971 'How's DX' column by Rod Newkirk, W9BRD (now also VA3ZBB). Newkirk called them 'the unsung fathers of Amateur Radio.'
While he probably was not trying to coin a term at the time, here's how Newkirk introduced 'Elmer' in his column and, as it turned out, to the rest of the Amateur Radio world: 'Too frequently one hears a sad story in this little nutshell: 'Oh, I almost got a ticket, too, but Elmer, W9XYZ, moved away and I kind of lost interest.' ' Newkirk went on to say, 'We need those Elmers. All the Elmers, including the ham who took the most time and trouble to give you a push toward your license, are the birds who keep this great game young and fresh.'
-Rick Lindquist, N1RL As you can see, the term is not very old. Prior to the first use of Elmer as the one who guided and encouraged us, what were these folks called? I have received a lot of suggestions; teacher, mentor, tutor, guide, helper, sage? All are appropriate but my guess would be that first and foremost they were called friend.
Thank you for sharing that article. It seems that his earliest book, 'The Boy Electrician' is in the public domain and available for download in PDF format. However, it is 200 Mb, so if you have a slow connection, it'll take a while. I have a couple first editions that predate The Boy Electrician - one being Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony Simply Explained and the other, I can't remember of the top of my head. Also, he wrote a book on building a glider that was first published before 1910, IIRC.
If any one has a copy of that book that they'd like to donate to me, please PM. Mike From the banks of the Big River, currently living in the lapse of luxury!