C.L. Stong wrote the "Amateur Scientist" column for Scientific American for many years. When I was a boy, my mom saved up to buy me the anthology of Strong's columns. It had a big impression on me -- I still have a copy on my shelf. I never gave much thought to the illustrations, but I now realize that they were responsible for much of the impact that that book had on me. The cloud chamber drawing was one of my favorites. Note the use of peanut-butter jars. Yea!
This morning an article on the Maker blog focused on the genius who did all those wonderful drawings: Roger Hayward (I wonder if there is any relation to Wes and Roger -- all three are from Oregon and all three are technical geniuses.)
I found this very nice web site about Roger Hayward: http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/hayward/introduction/introduction/
There are great illustrations in many places. For the Scientific American drawings go to the 1960s section.
And check out this one:
From: http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/items/show/4456
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
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While at a market I picked up a Boys Own Annual and put it down. How I regret that now, because after that event it started a thought process that took me back to RA Penfolds book How to Build Advanced Shortwave Radios which showed line drawings of the construction process.
ReplyDeleteAs a young lad unable to afford building the described radios, retrospectively thinking about that Boys Own annual, which had articles on learning to draw and was illustrated with many hand line drawings, I wondered that those RA Penfold drawings had been responsible for causing my imagination to run wild thinking how great it would be to build such a radio.
This involvement of my imagination increased my attention and thus captivated my interest. Look at me now, 40 years later I'm on the Soldersmoke website - its still there.
It gained a reader involvement that is often lacking in the all singing Digital Photograph we take for granted on the web these days.
The line drawings caused me to create images in my mind that is the case when setting about to build anything.
First it is created in your mind, then in the real world.
If your going to take the time to draw it by pencil in your hand then it must be worth my time to make it.
2E0CHK
I just downloaded a free pdf of this entire book today from https://ia801502.us.archive.org/33/items/TheAmateurScientist/Stong-TheAmateurScientist.pdf
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