10 ms·

The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015

227 points by jotux 12y ago

kabdib 12y ago
I'm making my way through the 2nd edition now. As a software guy who occasionally writes close-to-the-metal firmware, I wish I'd read the book a lot earlier. It's fun to wire up a few transistors and other components and see them behave the way your calculations said they would. It's also fun to be talking to hardware engineers about firmware, and then drop into a discussion about the circuit at hand. Sometimes it makes their eyes bug out. :-) Sometimes you can even save money by suggesting a different approach that software can make better use of.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
At last!
adamboulanger 12y ago
If they mess with transistor man, riot.
smoyer 12y ago
Best electronics book ever ... Updated but even the older versions contain relevant theory (though I gues when the 74xx parts are obsolete that would change).
- jeff_marshall 12y ago
  Indeed - the second edition was very helpful for me (An embedded SW/crypto person by day doing basic electronics and ham radio as a hobby) during the early 00's. I didn't see a chapter list. I wonder whether FPGA technology will be touched on at all? some of the modern small FPGAs are incredibly useful when paired with a microcontroller or the newer uc++ boards like the edison. Then again, so many new toys are available (DDS comes to mind for radio) that I imagine a lot of newer tech is out of scope for a book that focuses on the fundamentals. There's always the AARL books :)
analog31 12y ago
I learned from the 1st edition, back in 1983, when I took the electronics course for physics majors. I think it's the best textbook I've ever used, in any subject. I fell in love with analog electronics. Note my HN user name. ;-) What's happened with analog since then? I believe that opto-electronics is much more important today, as are switchmode circuits. Some things, like systematic noise budgeting, will never go away, even if we have to learn the behaviors of some new devices. Also, it's probably harder to get away with having just a limited understanding of high speed circuits and transmission lines today. But something I like about analog electronics is that physics will always be physics. If you liked H&H, you might also like: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It all Work, by Phil Hobbs.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  If you liked H&H, you might also like: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It all Work, by Phil Hobbs. +1, definitely an underrated book. It applies to a lot more than just EO systems.
- aswanson 12y ago
  What happened? Digital and moore's law took over. The microprocessor continues to absorb every function that, at one point, made economical sense to do in the analog domain. I share your lament, but reality instructs us to condition signals and supply voltage properly, and let the micro take it from there. It's only going to become more true as time moves on, so learn programming. Get very good at it.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    And just how many serial busses, wireless networks, HDD heads, flash level detectors, and DRAM sense amplifiers did those words of yours have to travel across to get from you to me compared to 10 or 15 years ago? Analog only looks like it's falling in importance if you divide by the size of the digital industry.
    - VLM 12y ago
      Don't forget traditional RF. How do you build a microwave low noise RF preamp using a microcontroller? Or a 1000 watt solid state broadcast transmitter using a microcontroller?
comboy 12y ago
Hope it's for real this time. It was supposed to be out in early 2014 http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-art-of-electronics-3rd-edition-finished-writing-and-copy-editing/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-art-of-electronics-3rd...
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Sounds like it. Win Hill mentioned on Usenet a few weeks ago that it was really done and in the hands of the publisher.
  - comboy 12y ago
    I can't wait to get my hands on it.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Well there is another $120 pre-allocated :-). I hope they make an electronic version, although I would be OK with buying a second copy and getting it scanned if they don't.
- lallysingh 12y ago
  Seriously. I like to study textbooks on the train, but can't carry much more than a tablet and laptop. I'd pay for the hardback and more, just for an eBook. Preferably in a format that let's me highlight and take notes.
- bronson 12y ago
  Me too. All the engineering books I use week-to-week are PDFs in a directory on my computer. The dead tree versions (including AoE) sit on the shelf unused. Make sure to click the "I want this title to be available as an ebook" link on that page.
  - kefka 12y ago
    And my jaded self would think the digital copy would be some DRM pile of crap. I've dealt with "school books-but online" before. I've seen things like 'book explodes after 180 days combined with 'can only print 10 pages'. I'll scan it myself or download it from someone who has. I'm just done with DRM. Never again.
    - bronson 12y ago
      Agree 100%, none of my engineering ebooks are DRMed. For some of them, I bought the text and then immediately pirated it off thepiratebay (rip) with a clear conscience. Seriously, screw DRM.
- tankgrrl 12y ago
  Just FYI, in case it's not well-known, there's now an electronic version of the 2nd edition for Kindle. It's page-scanned (something Amazon used to be picky about because of file size), so the figures are nice and crisp. http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz-ebook/dp/B00NY1OFVM http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz-ebook/dp...
vskarine 12y ago
By far the best book written on the topic. I would argue it has all the content of Computer Engineering degree in one book.
gketuma 12y ago
can't wait for this. Time to step my Electronics Design game up.
spiritplumber 12y ago
The smartest man I know gave me his copy, signed by Horowitz, and told me "Figure this out, and you're a double E". Four years and a half later, I was able to return it upon graduation. (Yeah, I took an extra semester...) On a tiny shelf behind his tiny desk in his huge lab were a bible and a copy of AoE.
spiritplumber 12y ago
The smartest man I know gave me his copy, signed by Horowitz, and told me "Figure this out, and you're a double E". Four years and a half later, I was able to return it upon graduation. On a tiny shelf behind his tiny desk in his huge lab were a bible and a copy of AoE.
jotux 12y ago
For the uninitiated this is considered, by many, to be the electronics bible. Sort of a TAOCP for electronics and circuits. The last version came out in 1989 and we're finally getting an update this year.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  > Sort of a TAOCP for electronics and circuits. Except people actually read The Art of Electronics :)
hoboon 12y ago
I wonder if they're going to do the same for the lab manual? I have a copy of the 2nd addition and there are instructions to mail a physical paper letter to addresses for parts.
throwaway000002 12y ago
This is offtopic, but I need to ask this question and I fear I may loose the opportunity to field it to this audience of experts. I'm interested in two things and am wondering if this book, or something else, would be of use to me. Assume I have strong math background, and assume I understand the Maxwell equations. What book/resource provides a good understanding of the approximations (from first principles) needed to provide a reasonable simulation of say a (layered) circuit board and increasing frequency signals? How about if you went more complex and wanted to understand (and again simulate in software) say the behavior of 28nm CMOS circuits? Any help would be appreciated. This is more of a longer-term/backburner project for me, but I'd love to understand this aspect of hardware.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  If you threw out an off topic post and actually put contact information in your profile, and I had something to add, I would email you and nobody here would care (although your off topic post might get downvoted into oblivion) but submitting an off topic post with no way to contact you is not very useful.
  - tlrobinson 12y ago
    "with no way to contact you" Why doesn't the "reply" button suffice? Other people may be interested in the answers.
  - throwaway000002 12y ago
    I've made changes to my profile, I hope they're useful. I also voted you up to counter the downvote. Sorry, but it's true, others could be interested in what you have to say.
- joshvm 12y ago
  Have a look for resources on the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method for electromagnetic simulation. Also in use are the finite element method (FEM) or the method of moments (MOM). Wikipedia has a decent-ish rundown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_electromagnetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_electromagnetics. The Art of Electronics will not help you for simulation, it's a very good practical manual for analogue electronics design. It'll help you understand how a circuit works, but electrical engineers rarely need to solve Maxwell's equations when designing a circuit. It's not a bad idea to read through it however, I can't see many situations where you'd immediately dive into EM simulation without understanding how the circuit works first.
aswanson 12y ago
This is a book that they should introduce freshman year to all ee undergraduates. For some reason, the traditional first-year curriculum mandates the same high school calculus and physics that bored the better students in their teen years. But in my not so humble opinion, this is the type of stuff they should start out with.
ausjke 12y ago
can I pre-order at amazon? i have the 2nd but would like to get 3rd, preferably in e-book format though update: it's on amazon, just pre-ordered one copy for $108
Animats 12y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics#Third_edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics#Third_e... for all the pre-announcements since 2006. This isn't the first announcement. Back in 2009 or so Amazon was taking pre-orders. It really is an excellent book. It was written as a guide for grad students who need to build instrumentation. A 25 year old book on electronic design that talks about specific IC part numbers in detail is way out of date, though. The approach used needs a refresh every five years or so. It's less necessary than it used to be. We have so many on-line resources for building electronics now.
- aceperry 12y ago
  Interestingly, a lot of the parts discussed are still in wide use today. Much of the concepts are necessary for understanding circuits and how they work.
  - markrages 12y ago
    Some of the parts discussed are probably in wide use because they are mentioned in AoE. The uA741 effect.
    - jschwartzi 12y ago
      That was basically the only opamp we were allowed to use in my undergraduate electronics for Physicists classes.
      - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
        It's a terrible opamp for precision measurement. (Actually it's a terrible opamp for most things, except maybe student experiments.) I have mixed feelings about AofA. On the one hand it's funny and a good broad introduction to a lot of relevant concepts. On the other it glosses over so much of the math you need to learn to be competent at design that it doesn't teach you nearly as much as it seems to. When I first read it as an electronic engineering undergrad I thought this was a very good thing, especially compared to the standard textbooks that buried you in equations. A few decades later I'm not so convinced. I think a good upgrade would be a series of much bigger books (or Wiki pages?) that keep the breezy hands-on style but also dig fearlessly into the details.
aceperry 12y ago
I loved that book. Glad to see an update. It has much practical advice that you don't get in the classroom.
whistlerbrk 12y ago
Never heard of this but the comments here are piquing my interest. I'm currently reading Digital Computer Electronics (1977 edition, current here: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Computer-Electronics-Albert-Malvino/dp/0028005945/ http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Computer-Electronics-Albert-Ma...). Would others agree this might be a nice follow up for me, especially if I'm looking for more current material now that I (am starting to) get the fundamentals?
- tankgrrl 12y ago
  Indeed. The 2nd edition companion Student Manual by Tom Hayes (which will also be updated) used in Harvard's class covers building a functioning computer 'from scratch'. Lots of practical labs and discussion in it. Also, the AoE 3rd edition has a new chapter on microcontrollers. I'll see if it's OK to post a table of contents of the new book here.
markrages 12y ago
Ah, do they mean April 1st?
- joshvm 12y ago
  Amazon says not until the 4th July in the UK.
shanusmagnus 12y ago
I have a MS in CSCI, PhD in cognitive psych, but know nothing at all about electronics. Is this a reasonable first book? I ask bc somebody compared it to TAOCP which I would not recommend to somebody with zero CSCI/programming skills. EDIT: thanks for the feedback, I'll look elsewhere to get my feet wet.
- mcescalante 12y ago
  There is a lot of good introductory type material, but the book treats many slightly advanced topics as though they are casual, and skips around topics plenty. An example would be how quickly (within the 1st chapter) Thevenin circuits come up. I remember taking an entire semester to get to these in my EE coursework. Many may say otherwise, but I would argue that this is a better reference than it is a book to learn electronics from the ground up, but that doesn't mean that you can't use it as a guide as you learn and look elsewhere for missing info.
- tdicola 12y ago
  No, don't start with this book. Start with something focused on beginners like Make: Electronics by Charles Platt.
- angersock 12y ago
  Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims III. It's got happy little pictures of electrons. :)
- tobinfricke 12y ago
  AoE is comparable to TAOCP only in legendary status. As a point of reference, AoE is the standard textbook for teaching practical electronics to undergraduate physics students at many universities (e.g. UC Berkeley).
- jeffwass 12y ago
  I disagree with the below and would recommend this book. See my other comment on this thread for more details. But basically I took Physics 123 at Harvard, and AoE sprang from the professor's lecture notes. When I took the class in the late 90's, It was taught by Horowiz and Hayes, as Hill had left previously to do his own thing. The class had many people from non-hard-science disciplines who didn't know anything about electronics. I specifically remember a couple of psych students. They all did great, see comment above on what we build at the ends of the analog and digital halves of a one-semester course. The student lab manual written by Horowiz and Hayes, from which we did our class labs, also gives great context and a hands-on plan to learning the material. I also knew a few artists in the Boston scene that used this book to build actual electronic items for performance art shows, including robo-mechanical drum machines and analog synths.
tlrobinson 12y ago
FYI Amazon appears to have it for $12 less, including shipping: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266 http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0...
marai2 12y ago
Can someone with no electronics background at all pick up this book? If not what would be a good prerequisite book?
- jeffwass 12y ago
  Yes, that's basically the purpose of this book. Though amazingly experts will also learn many things and find it useful too. I took the Physics 123 class at Harvard, from which this book developed from the original course notes, and uses this as the textbook (the class is still taught by Horowitz who has encyclopediac knowledge of electronics and Hayes who replaced Hill when he left Harvard. These guys also wrote the accompanying lab manual which I also highly recommend). You had all sorts of non-scientific people in the class. To give some context, one semester is split into two halves. The first half covers analog electronics, and ends with a lab where the whole class designed and built a system to take analog audio signal, pulse-width modulate it to an IR transmitter, broadcast across the room to another receiver circuit that demodulates, amplifies, and plays it. Designed by students that originally never knew what a resistor or transistor was. Second half is all digital, starts with glue logic and ends with the building of a breadboard computer (68008, the 8-bit external bus flavor of 68008). We'd write assembly programs into an EEPROM and program it to do all kinds of things. Again, students that had no idea what a NAND gate was nor ever wrote a line of code.
  - spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
    Thanks for that I am getting into ardunio and was looking for good textbook - I have basic electronics back from my engineeing ONC and need sligly more up to date book than the priciples of wireless that I inherited from my dad - pre transistor age and still referes to capacitors as condensors :-)
  - GregBuchholz 12y ago
    I wonder if anyone knows if there is a comparable reference for mechanical engineering? Something that someone in a different discipline could use to get at least conversant in. I'm a EE who has been interested in building more mechanical things (especially how to compute things mechanically), but some of my biggest problems are know what search terms to use when trying to look things up. Like for instance I've been wanting something like a mechanical multiplier/mixer. There would be one rotating input shaft, two rotating output shafts (call them X and Y), and a "control" input which would direct the input shaft motion to the output shafts in proportion to the control. So if the control were at say the "zero" position, all the input motion would be transmitted to the X shaft, and Y would be motionless. When the control was at the "one" position, all the motion would be transmitted to the Y shaft, and X would be stationary. The control would be continuously variable, and it would be great if it also performed the sinusoidal conversion at the same time, essentially: X = Input * sin(control) Y = Input * cos(control) ...I imagine something like this must exist, and deriving it from first principles probably isn't exceedingly difficult, but knowing what it is called is another matter. Getting back to the topic at hand, I suppose the book I'm dreaming of would cover things like gears/pulleys and their common/interesting combinations (like a differential), springs, thermodynamics, hydraulics, linkages, heat engines, etc.. And as long as I'm dreaming if there are also similar texts for chemistry and cellular biology/DNA/genetic engineering, I'd also purchase those.
gadders 12y ago
I always wanted a copy of this when it was recommended on my Comp Sys Engineering B.Eng but never could afford it at the time. I'm tempted to buy a copy now even though the closest I get to electronics these days is configuring my router. //edit//$120! It was £20 when it was recommended on my course in 1990 (IIRC).
- gjm11 12y ago
  Inflation since 1990: a little more than 2x. Exchange rate: about 1.5x. So £20 in 1990 is something like $60 now. So it's gone up by about a factor of 2. That's fairly sad, but it's not as spectacular as the 20:120 ratio your comment suggests...
  - gadders 12y ago
    Well, it looks like it's been enhanced quite a bit. Not saying it's not worth it, but it has jumped out of the "impulse buy" category.
acd 12y ago
Own this book previous edition. What is good resources for learning electronics online? Are the online schools like Codeschool and Codeacademy with tutorials anywhere that are good that you can recommend?
- kbart 12y ago
  There usually are few electronic related courses on Coursera. Haven't done any of them yet, but I'm satisfied with the quality of their other courses. Check "engineering" category here: https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&categories=ee https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&categories=ee
- prestonbriggs 12y ago
  I was impressed by https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/ https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/
DanBC 12y ago
The Art of Electronics, combined with the Student Workbook are excellent books to teach yourself electronics. I guess today you'd use electronic simulations on a computer rather than real components on bread-boards with real test equipment. Perhaps some HNer is involved with this type of simulation software? I might be worth creating "labs" that can be used while reading tAoE?
- VLM 12y ago
  I think the best analogy I can give for doing electronic labs online is the way cisco certification tests were provided in a very limited simulation presumably using regex's to see if you get it "right" (at least this is how it was a decade ago) vs getting time at an actual router command line. Its a different experience to do something real vs a simulation with pre-determined conclusions and situations. I'm struggling to think of a programming analogy, comparing getting a real live REPL to getting some kind of not-REPL training environment. I don't think there really is anything that bad in all of program writing. What simulation is really good at is optimization. Its a useful skill but not the only one. Maybe a good programming analogy would be ripping all the "write a program" assignments out of a CS curriculum and replacing them all with profiler exercises. So rather than writing your own bubblesort and quicksort, you'd just run a profiler on someone elses sorting libraries and compare the numerical results to get the expected result from the book. A really good car analogy is I'm old enough that when we did Drivers Ed we had simulation where driving scenes were projected on a screen and we optimistically pretended to drive a car, vs the behind the wheel section of drivers ed where we actually drove a real car around. Its kind of useful, kind of, but I don't think you can really learn to drive a car by watching carefully crafted movies of someone else driving.
  - gmt2027 12y ago
    I studied the Cisco networking materials 5-10 years ago but never actually got round to taking the tests. Dynamips was a router hardware emulator for the 1700, 2600, 3600, 3700, and 7200 hardware platforms that booted up actual Cisco IOS images. With GNS3, it was possible to set up complex network topologies of dynamips routers that would have cost thousands of dollars in real hardware without losing any of the realism as these were essentially virtualised routers. I haven't kept up with the progress here but Cisco certification may not be the best example.
epaladin 12y ago
I was lucky enough to find a copy of the 2nd ed. in the closet of an apartment I moved into during college. I really need to actually read it sometime!
mrfusion 12y ago
Random question that's been bothering me (since I might have the attention of electronics experts right now) If I charge a simple parallel plate capacitor, and then pull they plates apart, how does that affect the potential energy stored? Would it be hard to pull apart?
- mrfusion 12y ago
  (Also what's the best way to learn the formulas so I can figure out these kind of questions for myself?) Buying an advanced Physics textbook seems too daunting.
  - castratikron 12y ago
    The voltage wouldn't change, but the energy would decrease. The energy stored in a capacitor is a potential energy, which means that the energy depends on the orientation of the capacitor's plates. The decrease in energy is equal to the work required to pull the plates apart.
    - mrfusion 12y ago
      Intuitively it seems like the energy would increase because you're putting in work to pull them apart, no? And you'd still have opposite charges on the two plates so there would always be some energy from that?
  - Steuard 12y ago
    As someone who regularly assigns the question you asked as homework (in an advanced physics course, mind you), let me put in a word of advice: don't think of what you're aiming for as "learn[ing] the formulas". In my experience, that mindset (which fits so very well in most high school science classes) is the single most common stumbling block for college-level physics students. Equations and formulas exist purely in service to concepts. If you can't tell a story about "what's really going on" (qualitatively) without reference to the equations, then (in most cases) you probably shouldn't try to use the equations, either. I see student after student try to solve complicated problems via "equation hunting", where they just dig through their notes or the textbook looking for formulas that have the right variables in them, and then look for ways of combining them to find an answer. (Sometimes their thinking is a step more sophisticated than that, but it's a characteristic pattern.) Students start to become experts in physics once their mental model of the subject transforms from a jumbled pile of independent equations into a network of concepts with equations like little neurons binding them together.
jedp 12y ago
It is a fantastic book. I'd also like to recommend Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk (http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-Scherz/dp/0071771336 http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-S...). I'm in the crowd that's getting into analog electronics and digital circuits backwards, as it were, by starting with programmable microcontrollers (Arduinos etc.) and moving outward from them on the circuit board. I found the latter book was particularly well suited for self-learning. It is also huge and, as far as I can tell, vastly comprehensive. The writing is clear and concise. Explanations of concepts often draw on analogy, classical electrical theory, and quantum physics alike. This multitude of approaches has helped me grasp the fundamentals more firmly than other books. It also keeps an eye on practical applications. Sections on, say, power rectifiers or op amps or timers or debouncing circuits or whatever all show you many variations on a theme, with discussion of what you would want to use in which situations. Also, if I'm speaking to anyone else like me, software engineers who want to know hardware, buy all the books you can, but get an oscilloscope. I waited far too long for this purchase. I wouldn't write code without a debugger; this is the hardware equivalent. I recently got this little Rigol model: https://www.adafruit.com/products/681 https://www.adafruit.com/products/681 . It costs the same as a few big electronics books, and it's the difference between stumbling around a room in the dark and having illumination everywhere.
rotoole 12y ago
One of the coolest experiences I had in grad school at MIT was taking professor Horowitz's Physics 123 class at Harvard, and reading this book cover to cover in a semester. Pain! FYI, AoE covers BOTH analog and digital circuits in great detail. You don't need to know how a computer works in that level of detail, in order to program it. But having started my education w/ high level languages like Java, C, C++, etc... it was fun to work back down to voltages, capacitors, buses, clocks, EPROM, transistors etc, and see how it all comes together end-to-end.
tdicola 12y ago
Looks like Adafruit will have the book in its shop too: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2356 https://www.adafruit.com/products/2356 Can see some better pics of it there.

227 points by jotux 12y ago

I'm making my way through the 2nd edition now. As a software guy who occasionally writes close-to-the-metal firmware, I wish I'd read the book a lot earlier. It's fun to wire up a few transistors and other components and see them behave the way your calculations said they would. It's also fun to be talking to hardware engineers about firmware, and then drop into a discussion about the circuit at hand. Sometimes it makes their eyes bug out. :-) Sometimes you can even save money by suggesting a different approach that software can make better use of.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago

At last!

adamboulanger 12y ago

If they mess with transistor man, riot.

smoyer 12y ago

Best electronics book ever ... Updated but even the older versions contain relevant theory (though I gues when the 74xx parts are obsolete that would change).

jeff_marshall 12y ago
Indeed - the second edition was very helpful for me (An embedded SW/crypto person by day doing basic electronics and ham radio as a hobby) during the early 00's. I didn't see a chapter list. I wonder whether FPGA technology will be touched on at all? some of the modern small FPGAs are incredibly useful when paired with a microcontroller or the newer uc++ boards like the edison. Then again, so many new toys are available (DDS comes to mind for radio) that I imagine a lot of newer tech is out of scope for a book that focuses on the fundamentals. There's always the AARL books :)

analog31 12y ago

I learned from the 1st edition, back in 1983, when I took the electronics course for physics majors. I think it's the best textbook I've ever used, in any subject. I fell in love with analog electronics. Note my HN user name. ;-) What's happened with analog since then? I believe that opto-electronics is much more important today, as are switchmode circuits. Some things, like systematic noise budgeting, will never go away, even if we have to learn the behaviors of some new devices. Also, it's probably harder to get away with having just a limited understanding of high speed circuits and transmission lines today. But something I like about analog electronics is that physics will always be physics. If you liked H&H, you might also like: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It all Work, by Phil Hobbs.

CamperBob2 12y ago
If you liked H&H, you might also like: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It all Work, by Phil Hobbs. +1, definitely an underrated book. It applies to a lot more than just EO systems.
aswanson 12y ago
What happened? Digital and moore's law took over. The microprocessor continues to absorb every function that, at one point, made economical sense to do in the analog domain. I share your lament, but reality instructs us to condition signals and supply voltage properly, and let the micro take it from there. It's only going to become more true as time moves on, so learn programming. Get very good at it.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  And just how many serial busses, wireless networks, HDD heads, flash level detectors, and DRAM sense amplifiers did those words of yours have to travel across to get from you to me compared to 10 or 15 years ago? Analog only looks like it's falling in importance if you divide by the size of the digital industry.
  - VLM 12y ago
    Don't forget traditional RF. How do you build a microwave low noise RF preamp using a microcontroller? Or a 1000 watt solid state broadcast transmitter using a microcontroller?

comboy 12y ago

Hope it's for real this time. It was supposed to be out in early 2014 http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-art-of-electronics-3rd-edition-finished-writing-and-copy-editing/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-art-of-electronics-3rd...

CamperBob2 12y ago
Sounds like it. Win Hill mentioned on Usenet a few weeks ago that it was really done and in the hands of the publisher.
- comboy 12y ago
  I can't wait to get my hands on it.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Well there is another $120 pre-allocated :-). I hope they make an electronic version, although I would be OK with buying a second copy and getting it scanned if they don't.

lallysingh 12y ago
Seriously. I like to study textbooks on the train, but can't carry much more than a tablet and laptop. I'd pay for the hardback and more, just for an eBook. Preferably in a format that let's me highlight and take notes.
bronson 12y ago
Me too. All the engineering books I use week-to-week are PDFs in a directory on my computer. The dead tree versions (including AoE) sit on the shelf unused. Make sure to click the "I want this title to be available as an ebook" link on that page.
- kefka 12y ago
  And my jaded self would think the digital copy would be some DRM pile of crap. I've dealt with "school books-but online" before. I've seen things like 'book explodes after 180 days combined with 'can only print 10 pages'. I'll scan it myself or download it from someone who has. I'm just done with DRM. Never again.
  - bronson 12y ago
    Agree 100%, none of my engineering ebooks are DRMed. For some of them, I bought the text and then immediately pirated it off thepiratebay (rip) with a clear conscience. Seriously, screw DRM.
tankgrrl 12y ago
Just FYI, in case it's not well-known, there's now an electronic version of the 2nd edition for Kindle. It's page-scanned (something Amazon used to be picky about because of file size), so the figures are nice and crisp. http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz-ebook/dp/B00NY1OFVM http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz-ebook/dp...

vskarine 12y ago

By far the best book written on the topic. I would argue it has all the content of Computer Engineering degree in one book.

gketuma 12y ago

can't wait for this. Time to step my Electronics Design game up.

spiritplumber 12y ago

The smartest man I know gave me his copy, signed by Horowitz, and told me "Figure this out, and you're a double E". Four years and a half later, I was able to return it upon graduation. (Yeah, I took an extra semester...) On a tiny shelf behind his tiny desk in his huge lab were a bible and a copy of AoE.

spiritplumber 12y ago

The smartest man I know gave me his copy, signed by Horowitz, and told me "Figure this out, and you're a double E". Four years and a half later, I was able to return it upon graduation. On a tiny shelf behind his tiny desk in his huge lab were a bible and a copy of AoE.

jotux 12y ago

For the uninitiated this is considered, by many, to be the electronics bible. Sort of a TAOCP for electronics and circuits. The last version came out in 1989 and we're finally getting an update this year.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago
> Sort of a TAOCP for electronics and circuits. Except people actually read The Art of Electronics :)

hoboon 12y ago

I wonder if they're going to do the same for the lab manual? I have a copy of the 2nd addition and there are instructions to mail a physical paper letter to addresses for parts.

throwaway000002 12y ago

This is offtopic, but I need to ask this question and I fear I may loose the opportunity to field it to this audience of experts. I'm interested in two things and am wondering if this book, or something else, would be of use to me. Assume I have strong math background, and assume I understand the Maxwell equations. What book/resource provides a good understanding of the approximations (from first principles) needed to provide a reasonable simulation of say a (layered) circuit board and increasing frequency signals? How about if you went more complex and wanted to understand (and again simulate in software) say the behavior of 28nm CMOS circuits? Any help would be appreciated. This is more of a longer-term/backburner project for me, but I'd love to understand this aspect of hardware.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
If you threw out an off topic post and actually put contact information in your profile, and I had something to add, I would email you and nobody here would care (although your off topic post might get downvoted into oblivion) but submitting an off topic post with no way to contact you is not very useful.
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  "with no way to contact you" Why doesn't the "reply" button suffice? Other people may be interested in the answers.
- throwaway000002 12y ago
  I've made changes to my profile, I hope they're useful. I also voted you up to counter the downvote. Sorry, but it's true, others could be interested in what you have to say.
joshvm 12y ago
Have a look for resources on the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method for electromagnetic simulation. Also in use are the finite element method (FEM) or the method of moments (MOM). Wikipedia has a decent-ish rundown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_electromagnetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_electromagnetics. The Art of Electronics will not help you for simulation, it's a very good practical manual for analogue electronics design. It'll help you understand how a circuit works, but electrical engineers rarely need to solve Maxwell's equations when designing a circuit. It's not a bad idea to read through it however, I can't see many situations where you'd immediately dive into EM simulation without understanding how the circuit works first.

aswanson 12y ago

This is a book that they should introduce freshman year to all ee undergraduates. For some reason, the traditional first-year curriculum mandates the same high school calculus and physics that bored the better students in their teen years. But in my not so humble opinion, this is the type of stuff they should start out with.

ausjke 12y ago

can I pre-order at amazon? i have the 2nd but would like to get 3rd, preferably in e-book format though update: it's on amazon, just pre-ordered one copy for $108

Animats 12y ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics#Third_edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics#Third_e... for all the pre-announcements since 2006. This isn't the first announcement. Back in 2009 or so Amazon was taking pre-orders. It really is an excellent book. It was written as a guide for grad students who need to build instrumentation. A 25 year old book on electronic design that talks about specific IC part numbers in detail is way out of date, though. The approach used needs a refresh every five years or so. It's less necessary than it used to be. We have so many on-line resources for building electronics now.

aceperry 12y ago
Interestingly, a lot of the parts discussed are still in wide use today. Much of the concepts are necessary for understanding circuits and how they work.
- markrages 12y ago
  Some of the parts discussed are probably in wide use because they are mentioned in AoE. The uA741 effect.
  - jschwartzi 12y ago
    That was basically the only opamp we were allowed to use in my undergraduate electronics for Physicists classes.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      It's a terrible opamp for precision measurement. (Actually it's a terrible opamp for most things, except maybe student experiments.) I have mixed feelings about AofA. On the one hand it's funny and a good broad introduction to a lot of relevant concepts. On the other it glosses over so much of the math you need to learn to be competent at design that it doesn't teach you nearly as much as it seems to. When I first read it as an electronic engineering undergrad I thought this was a very good thing, especially compared to the standard textbooks that buried you in equations. A few decades later I'm not so convinced. I think a good upgrade would be a series of much bigger books (or Wiki pages?) that keep the breezy hands-on style but also dig fearlessly into the details.

aceperry 12y ago

I loved that book. Glad to see an update. It has much practical advice that you don't get in the classroom.

whistlerbrk 12y ago

Never heard of this but the comments here are piquing my interest. I'm currently reading Digital Computer Electronics (1977 edition, current here: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Computer-Electronics-Albert-Malvino/dp/0028005945/ http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Computer-Electronics-Albert-Ma...). Would others agree this might be a nice follow up for me, especially if I'm looking for more current material now that I (am starting to) get the fundamentals?

tankgrrl 12y ago
Indeed. The 2nd edition companion Student Manual by Tom Hayes (which will also be updated) used in Harvard's class covers building a functioning computer 'from scratch'. Lots of practical labs and discussion in it. Also, the AoE 3rd edition has a new chapter on microcontrollers. I'll see if it's OK to post a table of contents of the new book here.

markrages 12y ago

Ah, do they mean April 1st?

joshvm 12y ago
Amazon says not until the 4th July in the UK.

shanusmagnus 12y ago

I have a MS in CSCI, PhD in cognitive psych, but know nothing at all about electronics. Is this a reasonable first book? I ask bc somebody compared it to TAOCP which I would not recommend to somebody with zero CSCI/programming skills. EDIT: thanks for the feedback, I'll look elsewhere to get my feet wet.

mcescalante 12y ago
There is a lot of good introductory type material, but the book treats many slightly advanced topics as though they are casual, and skips around topics plenty. An example would be how quickly (within the 1st chapter) Thevenin circuits come up. I remember taking an entire semester to get to these in my EE coursework. Many may say otherwise, but I would argue that this is a better reference than it is a book to learn electronics from the ground up, but that doesn't mean that you can't use it as a guide as you learn and look elsewhere for missing info.
tdicola 12y ago
No, don't start with this book. Start with something focused on beginners like Make: Electronics by Charles Platt.
angersock 12y ago
Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims III. It's got happy little pictures of electrons. :)
tobinfricke 12y ago
AoE is comparable to TAOCP only in legendary status. As a point of reference, AoE is the standard textbook for teaching practical electronics to undergraduate physics students at many universities (e.g. UC Berkeley).
jeffwass 12y ago
I disagree with the below and would recommend this book. See my other comment on this thread for more details. But basically I took Physics 123 at Harvard, and AoE sprang from the professor's lecture notes. When I took the class in the late 90's, It was taught by Horowiz and Hayes, as Hill had left previously to do his own thing. The class had many people from non-hard-science disciplines who didn't know anything about electronics. I specifically remember a couple of psych students. They all did great, see comment above on what we build at the ends of the analog and digital halves of a one-semester course. The student lab manual written by Horowiz and Hayes, from which we did our class labs, also gives great context and a hands-on plan to learning the material. I also knew a few artists in the Boston scene that used this book to build actual electronic items for performance art shows, including robo-mechanical drum machines and analog synths.

tlrobinson 12y ago

FYI Amazon appears to have it for $12 less, including shipping: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266 http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0...

marai2 12y ago

Can someone with no electronics background at all pick up this book? If not what would be a good prerequisite book?

jeffwass 12y ago
Yes, that's basically the purpose of this book. Though amazingly experts will also learn many things and find it useful too. I took the Physics 123 class at Harvard, from which this book developed from the original course notes, and uses this as the textbook (the class is still taught by Horowitz who has encyclopediac knowledge of electronics and Hayes who replaced Hill when he left Harvard. These guys also wrote the accompanying lab manual which I also highly recommend). You had all sorts of non-scientific people in the class. To give some context, one semester is split into two halves. The first half covers analog electronics, and ends with a lab where the whole class designed and built a system to take analog audio signal, pulse-width modulate it to an IR transmitter, broadcast across the room to another receiver circuit that demodulates, amplifies, and plays it. Designed by students that originally never knew what a resistor or transistor was. Second half is all digital, starts with glue logic and ends with the building of a breadboard computer (68008, the 8-bit external bus flavor of 68008). We'd write assembly programs into an EEPROM and program it to do all kinds of things. Again, students that had no idea what a NAND gate was nor ever wrote a line of code.
- spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
  Thanks for that I am getting into ardunio and was looking for good textbook - I have basic electronics back from my engineeing ONC and need sligly more up to date book than the priciples of wireless that I inherited from my dad - pre transistor age and still referes to capacitors as condensors :-)
- GregBuchholz 12y ago
  I wonder if anyone knows if there is a comparable reference for mechanical engineering? Something that someone in a different discipline could use to get at least conversant in. I'm a EE who has been interested in building more mechanical things (especially how to compute things mechanically), but some of my biggest problems are know what search terms to use when trying to look things up. Like for instance I've been wanting something like a mechanical multiplier/mixer. There would be one rotating input shaft, two rotating output shafts (call them X and Y), and a "control" input which would direct the input shaft motion to the output shafts in proportion to the control. So if the control were at say the "zero" position, all the input motion would be transmitted to the X shaft, and Y would be motionless. When the control was at the "one" position, all the motion would be transmitted to the Y shaft, and X would be stationary. The control would be continuously variable, and it would be great if it also performed the sinusoidal conversion at the same time, essentially: X = Input * sin(control) Y = Input * cos(control) ...I imagine something like this must exist, and deriving it from first principles probably isn't exceedingly difficult, but knowing what it is called is another matter. Getting back to the topic at hand, I suppose the book I'm dreaming of would cover things like gears/pulleys and their common/interesting combinations (like a differential), springs, thermodynamics, hydraulics, linkages, heat engines, etc.. And as long as I'm dreaming if there are also similar texts for chemistry and cellular biology/DNA/genetic engineering, I'd also purchase those.

gadders 12y ago

I always wanted a copy of this when it was recommended on my Comp Sys Engineering B.Eng but never could afford it at the time. I'm tempted to buy a copy now even though the closest I get to electronics these days is configuring my router. //edit//$120! It was £20 when it was recommended on my course in 1990 (IIRC).

gjm11 12y ago
Inflation since 1990: a little more than 2x. Exchange rate: about 1.5x. So £20 in 1990 is something like $60 now. So it's gone up by about a factor of 2. That's fairly sad, but it's not as spectacular as the 20:120 ratio your comment suggests...
- gadders 12y ago
  Well, it looks like it's been enhanced quite a bit. Not saying it's not worth it, but it has jumped out of the "impulse buy" category.

acd 12y ago

Own this book previous edition. What is good resources for learning electronics online? Are the online schools like Codeschool and Codeacademy with tutorials anywhere that are good that you can recommend?

kbart 12y ago
There usually are few electronic related courses on Coursera. Haven't done any of them yet, but I'm satisfied with the quality of their other courses. Check "engineering" category here: https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&categories=ee https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&categories=ee
prestonbriggs 12y ago
I was impressed by https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/ https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/

DanBC 12y ago

The Art of Electronics, combined with the Student Workbook are excellent books to teach yourself electronics. I guess today you'd use electronic simulations on a computer rather than real components on bread-boards with real test equipment. Perhaps some HNer is involved with this type of simulation software? I might be worth creating "labs" that can be used while reading tAoE?

VLM 12y ago
I think the best analogy I can give for doing electronic labs online is the way cisco certification tests were provided in a very limited simulation presumably using regex's to see if you get it "right" (at least this is how it was a decade ago) vs getting time at an actual router command line. Its a different experience to do something real vs a simulation with pre-determined conclusions and situations. I'm struggling to think of a programming analogy, comparing getting a real live REPL to getting some kind of not-REPL training environment. I don't think there really is anything that bad in all of program writing. What simulation is really good at is optimization. Its a useful skill but not the only one. Maybe a good programming analogy would be ripping all the "write a program" assignments out of a CS curriculum and replacing them all with profiler exercises. So rather than writing your own bubblesort and quicksort, you'd just run a profiler on someone elses sorting libraries and compare the numerical results to get the expected result from the book. A really good car analogy is I'm old enough that when we did Drivers Ed we had simulation where driving scenes were projected on a screen and we optimistically pretended to drive a car, vs the behind the wheel section of drivers ed where we actually drove a real car around. Its kind of useful, kind of, but I don't think you can really learn to drive a car by watching carefully crafted movies of someone else driving.
- gmt2027 12y ago
  I studied the Cisco networking materials 5-10 years ago but never actually got round to taking the tests. Dynamips was a router hardware emulator for the 1700, 2600, 3600, 3700, and 7200 hardware platforms that booted up actual Cisco IOS images. With GNS3, it was possible to set up complex network topologies of dynamips routers that would have cost thousands of dollars in real hardware without losing any of the realism as these were essentially virtualised routers. I haven't kept up with the progress here but Cisco certification may not be the best example.

epaladin 12y ago

I was lucky enough to find a copy of the 2nd ed. in the closet of an apartment I moved into during college. I really need to actually read it sometime!

mrfusion 12y ago

Random question that's been bothering me (since I might have the attention of electronics experts right now) If I charge a simple parallel plate capacitor, and then pull they plates apart, how does that affect the potential energy stored? Would it be hard to pull apart?

mrfusion 12y ago
(Also what's the best way to learn the formulas so I can figure out these kind of questions for myself?) Buying an advanced Physics textbook seems too daunting.
- castratikron 12y ago
  The voltage wouldn't change, but the energy would decrease. The energy stored in a capacitor is a potential energy, which means that the energy depends on the orientation of the capacitor's plates. The decrease in energy is equal to the work required to pull the plates apart.
  - mrfusion 12y ago
    Intuitively it seems like the energy would increase because you're putting in work to pull them apart, no? And you'd still have opposite charges on the two plates so there would always be some energy from that?
- Steuard 12y ago
  As someone who regularly assigns the question you asked as homework (in an advanced physics course, mind you), let me put in a word of advice: don't think of what you're aiming for as "learn[ing] the formulas". In my experience, that mindset (which fits so very well in most high school science classes) is the single most common stumbling block for college-level physics students. Equations and formulas exist purely in service to concepts. If you can't tell a story about "what's really going on" (qualitatively) without reference to the equations, then (in most cases) you probably shouldn't try to use the equations, either. I see student after student try to solve complicated problems via "equation hunting", where they just dig through their notes or the textbook looking for formulas that have the right variables in them, and then look for ways of combining them to find an answer. (Sometimes their thinking is a step more sophisticated than that, but it's a characteristic pattern.) Students start to become experts in physics once their mental model of the subject transforms from a jumbled pile of independent equations into a network of concepts with equations like little neurons binding them together.

jedp 12y ago

It is a fantastic book. I'd also like to recommend Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk (http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-Scherz/dp/0071771336 http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-S...). I'm in the crowd that's getting into analog electronics and digital circuits backwards, as it were, by starting with programmable microcontrollers (Arduinos etc.) and moving outward from them on the circuit board. I found the latter book was particularly well suited for self-learning. It is also huge and, as far as I can tell, vastly comprehensive. The writing is clear and concise. Explanations of concepts often draw on analogy, classical electrical theory, and quantum physics alike. This multitude of approaches has helped me grasp the fundamentals more firmly than other books. It also keeps an eye on practical applications. Sections on, say, power rectifiers or op amps or timers or debouncing circuits or whatever all show you many variations on a theme, with discussion of what you would want to use in which situations. Also, if I'm speaking to anyone else like me, software engineers who want to know hardware, buy all the books you can, but get an oscilloscope. I waited far too long for this purchase. I wouldn't write code without a debugger; this is the hardware equivalent. I recently got this little Rigol model: https://www.adafruit.com/products/681 https://www.adafruit.com/products/681 . It costs the same as a few big electronics books, and it's the difference between stumbling around a room in the dark and having illumination everywhere.

rotoole 12y ago

One of the coolest experiences I had in grad school at MIT was taking professor Horowitz's Physics 123 class at Harvard, and reading this book cover to cover in a semester. Pain! FYI, AoE covers BOTH analog and digital circuits in great detail. You don't need to know how a computer works in that level of detail, in order to program it. But having started my education w/ high level languages like Java, C, C++, etc... it was fun to work back down to voltages, capacitors, buses, clocks, EPROM, transistors etc, and see how it all comes together end-to-end.

tdicola 12y ago

Looks like Adafruit will have the book in its shop too: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2356 https://www.adafruit.com/products/2356 Can see some better pics of it there.