I was
reviewing a book this week (
An Analog Electronics Companion: Basic Circuit Design for Engineers and Scientists, by Scott Hamilton) and it reminded me, very forcefully, why it was that I wanted to be an engineer.
Far from being one of those people who go to college to “find themselves” and start on one track and then move to another, I knew from age maybe 11 that I wanted to be an electronics engineer and that I wanted to work in the BBC. At that age I was taking TVs apart – and putting them back together again – and I started building projects from scratch, including power supplies with lethal output voltages for my valve (tube) radios.
By the time I was 17 I held the third amateur TV license issued in the UK (G6AAC/T) and I was still determined to go the techie route.
I didn’t lie about my career direction at school and I was chastised by both teachers and peers and told that I should be thinking of entering college to study a
pure science, such as Physics or Chemistry. The pressure was intense and I actually started weakening, until the brother next older to me was sent down from King’s College, London, at the end of his first year. He had been reading Chemistry, and although they didn’t publicly admit it, they signed up more undergraduates than they actually wanted and then culled 10% at the end of the first year.
That brother went on to become a Reader in Mechanical and Production Engineering at the University of Nottingham, and was also Warden of Sherwood Hall – one of the University’s dorm blocks – and proudly displayed the framed letter from the Dean of King’s saying he had "no academic future" on the wall behind his desk.
When I read the Hamilton book, it was like entering another world: a precise must-prove-everything world. I don’t know any hands-on engineer that starts a project with a math equation. We understand the devices we work with and know the basic rules of thumb and have a few tricks. When we sketch out a circuit it does not guarantee its operation: but from that point we can simulate it. If that looks good, or even nearly good, we can build it and check it out for agreement with the simulation and our expectations.
How can we teach analog design to engineers? The Second Edition of Horowitz & Hill 's (1989)
The Art of Electronics ISBN (13): 978-0521370950, with little sign of unnecessary mathematics, is probably still the best out there, but there is nothing like having a mentor at your shoulder to stop you going down blind alleys. That doesn’t mean that the theory of all aspects of electronics should not be taught at the college level. It should, but the theory is not what will make a design work.
Analog design is all about hands-on. You have to try, check, re-do, check on a continual basis until you get your own rules of thumb and bag of tricks. Tim Green’s continuing
series on
Operational Amplifier Stability in the
acquisitionZONE of EN-Genius is a prime example of the way to go. Horowitz & Hill is a great start, but simulation is now the biggest, best thing that has been added to the designer’s toolkit. Use it!
Analog engineers are strange people. We know that, but we can bask in the fact that we are a unique group with very different destinies to the rest of engineering. Is there someone out there who can rewrite Horowitz & Hill for 2008? And could you also please rewrite the gospel of communications,
Radio Engineering by F E Terman? I absolutely promise to
buy a copy of each, instead of requesting a review copy. Now, that’s a sacrifice I wouldn’t make for a lot of the other books I have reviewed in recent years!
