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Stories about Mims always attract comments that make it clear that his writing inspired many to learn electronics. But to give some balance to the starry eyed

Stories about Mims always attract comments that make it clear that his writing inspired many to learn electronics. But to give some balance to the starry eyed impression left by the article and many such comments I suggest looking into his Wikipedia page [1] or any other source that talks about his creationist and climate change denialist views and how they have lead to controversy in his life. I would also strongly recommend against his books for beginners now because even simple projects should at least consider alternatives based on microcontrollers and there are now much better and more comprehensive books that cover the basics that Mims covered and more modern alternatives. I would recommend The Art of Electronics [2] (older editions can be bought affordably) which incorporates learn- from- real- world- bad- design wisdom, and which has a sense of humor utterly lacking in Mims' writing. 1 (with controversy section) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims 2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics

sas 8y ago
As someone who has spent a lot of time both on learning electronics and understanding how to teach it, I would argue against this as bad advice. The Art of Electronics is like a recipe book — it's a (whimsical, yes) set of reference designs to be referred to like templates for a design engineer. The Art of Electronics is not a well-suited recommendation for a beginner or novice. Furthermore: I have spoken to Forrest Mims (disclosure: the discussions I have had with him were in the process of creating circuitclassics.com. That said, I have not met him personally.) The conclusion I came to was that his personal beliefs do not affect and have no bearing on his technical work. (Broadly, I do not understand why this man is so hounded for his particular personal beliefs.) It is true that hundreds of thousands of engineers launched their careers after being exposed to his books, that they are quite good at this, still relevant — and probably the only book on electronics to sell over 1M genuine (and many more untrackably via unauthorized reproduction etc.) copies.
- pstuart 8y ago
  I have fond memories of his book and his writings. I was rather stunned that somebody so intelligent would be so willingly not so in other areas. No interest attacking him for it, but just, "Wow. really?" We all have our quirks, don't we.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > I was rather stunned that somebody so intelligent would be so willingly not so in other areas. Judging by the Wikipedia article, he's Christian. Which means creationism is a part of his belief systems. As for climate skepticism, hard to say, though I am curious about one thing. Wikipedia mentions him doing a lot of atmospheric research, hand has some pretty charts near the end - charts that, to my layman's opinion, should show a rising trend (due to correlation between water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), not a steady one. Could anyone comment on that and their relevance?
    - pjc50 8y ago
      > Which means creationism is a part of his belief systems This is only true for some doctrinal subsets of Christianity, and it's rare in European christian communities. Far weirder to find someone who's innovated in atmospheric research - a great little paper on how to determine atmospheric water content with a $10 IR thermometer - who doesn't believe in climate change. (https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3215.1 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3215.1 if you want the paper)
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    I don't have a dog in this fight, but nothing I've read by him shows any indication of being willfully unintelligent.
    - pstuart 8y ago
      Believing in Creationism is being willfully unintelligent. One can be a Christian and not be a creationist -- that's a choice.
- mkstowegnv 8y ago
  Different people learn in different ways. Unlike most people apparently I credit Mims with delaying my taking up electronics. I found his books a complete turn off when I was young - painfully unimaginative and boring. Mims books were the only books available at Radio Shack and in the US, Radio Shack for decades before hacker spaces was in most places the only place to begin to tinker with electronics. The high number of Mims books sold has a lot to do with those decades of "monopoly". The Art of Electronics is what worked for me and many others and I have three hard bound copies that are falling apart from overuse. There may be simpler, fewer- topics-covered alternatives that would be better for very young readers, but AoE is what most teachers in particular that I know swear by.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  (Broadly, I do not understand why this man is so hounded for his particular personal beliefs.) Mims's beliefs came to the forefront several years ago (probably more like 20 at this point) when he was under consideration to take over editorship of the 'Amateur Scientist' column in Scientific American. This column isn't too well-known today, but it was hugely influential from the WWII years through at least the 1970s. It regularly featured experiments in all sorts of areas, from physics and chemistry to meteorology to natural history and archaeology. I don't remember how the editors at SciAm found out that Mims was a creationist, but when they did, they rescinded the offer. There was a great deal of controversy among the magazine's readership at the time. The decision seemed prejudicial at best. Even without being religious, it felt like Mims was getting a raw deal. I originally fell into that camp myself, but the events and trends that have taken place since then make me inclined to support the magazine's decision. If it was true that Mims's faith required him to deny basic elements of geological history and biological evolution -- and apparently it was -- then it's hard to see how he could do that particular job effectively. It's a real shame, because it was otherwise the perfect job for him. Mental illness sucks, especially when it's voluntary.
lunchladydoris 8y ago
Does that have anything to do with his ability to inspire people to do something with their lives? We're headed down this dangerous path where it seems we need to be able to vouch for every aspect of a person's life before we're allowed to celebrate anything they've done. People can do amazing things. And they can be assholes. And most of the time they're both.
setquk 8y ago
I say this every time this is mentioned but Mimms actually did some brain damage to the budding electronics engineers. The books were cute but left people with a head full of things to be unlearned. This screwed up a number of my fellow students when they hit university. In fact our lecturer of the day, while drinking in the student union with us, described the Mimms books using language I can’t repeat here. I actually started with 1st edition Art of Electronics Laboratory Manual back in the 1980s before I even went to university. That was in all incarnations total gold. It’s a tutorial guide rather than the textbook format of the main book. In this day and age, Make Electronics (this will teach you which end of the soldering iron is hot) followed by TAOE is the way to go. Harry Kybett / Earl Boysen also produce an excellent book. Electronics is vastly more complicated (and interesting) than cutting and pasting knowledge which is what you end up with from Mimms.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  I found the Mimms 555/556 book to be a perfect source of copy/paste material to do the blinking lights “hello world” hardware equivalent. Most programmers start off copy/pasting hello world; they don’t generally start off with accumulators and indirect addressing modes.
apocalypstyx 8y ago
> creationist and climate change denialist Unfortunately, it's not exactly an uncommon problem. https://theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engineers-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ https://theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engine... https://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-explained https://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis... http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/thermo_patterson.html http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/thermo_patterson...

sas 8y ago

As someone who has spent a lot of time both on learning electronics and understanding how to teach it, I would argue against this as bad advice. The Art of Electronics is like a recipe book — it's a (whimsical, yes) set of reference designs to be referred to like templates for a design engineer. The Art of Electronics is not a well-suited recommendation for a beginner or novice. Furthermore: I have spoken to Forrest Mims (disclosure: the discussions I have had with him were in the process of creating circuitclassics.com. That said, I have not met him personally.) The conclusion I came to was that his personal beliefs do not affect and have no bearing on his technical work. (Broadly, I do not understand why this man is so hounded for his particular personal beliefs.) It is true that hundreds of thousands of engineers launched their careers after being exposed to his books, that they are quite good at this, still relevant — and probably the only book on electronics to sell over 1M genuine (and many more untrackably via unauthorized reproduction etc.) copies.

pstuart 8y ago
I have fond memories of his book and his writings. I was rather stunned that somebody so intelligent would be so willingly not so in other areas. No interest attacking him for it, but just, "Wow. really?" We all have our quirks, don't we.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I was rather stunned that somebody so intelligent would be so willingly not so in other areas. Judging by the Wikipedia article, he's Christian. Which means creationism is a part of his belief systems. As for climate skepticism, hard to say, though I am curious about one thing. Wikipedia mentions him doing a lot of atmospheric research, hand has some pretty charts near the end - charts that, to my layman's opinion, should show a rising trend (due to correlation between water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), not a steady one. Could anyone comment on that and their relevance?
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > Which means creationism is a part of his belief systems This is only true for some doctrinal subsets of Christianity, and it's rare in European christian communities. Far weirder to find someone who's innovated in atmospheric research - a great little paper on how to determine atmospheric water content with a $10 IR thermometer - who doesn't believe in climate change. (https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3215.1 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3215.1 if you want the paper)
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  I don't have a dog in this fight, but nothing I've read by him shows any indication of being willfully unintelligent.
  - pstuart 8y ago
    Believing in Creationism is being willfully unintelligent. One can be a Christian and not be a creationist -- that's a choice.
mkstowegnv 8y ago
Different people learn in different ways. Unlike most people apparently I credit Mims with delaying my taking up electronics. I found his books a complete turn off when I was young - painfully unimaginative and boring. Mims books were the only books available at Radio Shack and in the US, Radio Shack for decades before hacker spaces was in most places the only place to begin to tinker with electronics. The high number of Mims books sold has a lot to do with those decades of "monopoly". The Art of Electronics is what worked for me and many others and I have three hard bound copies that are falling apart from overuse. There may be simpler, fewer- topics-covered alternatives that would be better for very young readers, but AoE is what most teachers in particular that I know swear by.
CamperBob2 8y ago
(Broadly, I do not understand why this man is so hounded for his particular personal beliefs.) Mims's beliefs came to the forefront several years ago (probably more like 20 at this point) when he was under consideration to take over editorship of the 'Amateur Scientist' column in Scientific American. This column isn't too well-known today, but it was hugely influential from the WWII years through at least the 1970s. It regularly featured experiments in all sorts of areas, from physics and chemistry to meteorology to natural history and archaeology. I don't remember how the editors at SciAm found out that Mims was a creationist, but when they did, they rescinded the offer. There was a great deal of controversy among the magazine's readership at the time. The decision seemed prejudicial at best. Even without being religious, it felt like Mims was getting a raw deal. I originally fell into that camp myself, but the events and trends that have taken place since then make me inclined to support the magazine's decision. If it was true that Mims's faith required him to deny basic elements of geological history and biological evolution -- and apparently it was -- then it's hard to see how he could do that particular job effectively. It's a real shame, because it was otherwise the perfect job for him. Mental illness sucks, especially when it's voluntary.

lunchladydoris 8y ago

Does that have anything to do with his ability to inspire people to do something with their lives? We're headed down this dangerous path where it seems we need to be able to vouch for every aspect of a person's life before we're allowed to celebrate anything they've done. People can do amazing things. And they can be assholes. And most of the time they're both.

setquk 8y ago

I say this every time this is mentioned but Mimms actually did some brain damage to the budding electronics engineers. The books were cute but left people with a head full of things to be unlearned. This screwed up a number of my fellow students when they hit university. In fact our lecturer of the day, while drinking in the student union with us, described the Mimms books using language I can’t repeat here. I actually started with 1st edition Art of Electronics Laboratory Manual back in the 1980s before I even went to university. That was in all incarnations total gold. It’s a tutorial guide rather than the textbook format of the main book. In this day and age, Make Electronics (this will teach you which end of the soldering iron is hot) followed by TAOE is the way to go. Harry Kybett / Earl Boysen also produce an excellent book. Electronics is vastly more complicated (and interesting) than cutting and pasting knowledge which is what you end up with from Mimms.

sokoloff 8y ago
I found the Mimms 555/556 book to be a perfect source of copy/paste material to do the blinking lights “hello world” hardware equivalent. Most programmers start off copy/pasting hello world; they don’t generally start off with accumulators and indirect addressing modes.

apocalypstyx 8y ago

> creationist and climate change denialist Unfortunately, it's not exactly an uncommon problem. https://theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engineers-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ https://theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engine... https://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-explained https://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis... http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/thermo_patterson.html http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/thermo_patterson...