Scientific American used to run a really cool "Amateur Scientist" column when I was a kid, edited by C.L. Stong. In the early 70s they ran a couple articles abo

Scientific American used to run a really cool "Amateur Scientist" column when I was a kid, edited by C.L. Stong. In the early 70s they ran a couple articles about people who'd built their own Schlieren optics. I was fascinated by them! The articles appear to be pay-walled now (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-amateur-scientist-1971-05/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-amateur-scient... and http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-amateur-scientist-1974-08/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-amateur-scient...). It looks like the book that collected many of Stong's columns from the 50s and 60s predates those 2 articles (https://archive.org/details/TheAmateurScientist https://archive.org/details/TheAmateurScientist). There's a CD-ROM available that supposedly contains the text & images for _all_ of the Scientific American "Amateur Scientist" from the '20s to the late '90s, which would presumably also have those articles: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0970347626/sciencehobbyist/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0970347626/scienceh...