Acknowledgments
My association with MAKE magazine began when its editor, Mark Frauenfelder,
asked me to write for it. I have always been very grateful to Mark for his sup-
port of my work. Through him I became acquainted with the exceptionally
capable and motivated production staff at MAKE. Gareth Branwyn eventually
suggested that I might like to write an introductory guide to electronics, so I
am indebted to Gareth for initiating this project and supervising it as my edi-
tor. After I wrote an outline in which I described my idea for “Learning by Dis-
covery” and the associated concept that cutting open components or burning
them up can be an educational activity, MAKE’s publisher, Dale Dougherty,
uttered the memorable phrase, “I want this book!” Therefore I offer special
thanks to Dale for his belief in my abilities. Dan Woods, the associate publisher,
was also extremely supportive.
The production process was swift, competent, and painless. For this I thank my
editor at O’Reilly, Brian Jepson; senior production editor Rachel Monaghan;
copyeditor Nancy Kotary; proofreader Nancy Reinhardt; indexer Julie Hawks;
designer Ron Bilodeau; and Robert Romano, who tweaked my illustrations.
Most of all I am indebted to Bunnie Huang, my technical advisor, who reviewed
the text in detail and knows a bunch of stuff that I don’t know. Any residual er-
rors are still my fault, even though I would prefer to blame them on Bunnie.
Thanks also to Matt Mets, Becky Stern, Collin Cunningham, Marc de Vinck,
Phillip Torrone, Limor Fried, John Edgar Park, John Baichtal, and Jonathan
Wolfe for helping out with some last-minute project testing.
Lastly I have to mention the genius of John Warnock and Charles Geschke,
founders of Adobe Systems and creators of the very beautiful PostScript lan-
guage, which revolutionized all of publishing. The horror of attempting to cre-
ate this book using graphic-arts tools from...some other company...is almost
unimaginable. In fact, without Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, and InDesign, I
doubt I would have attempted the task. I am also indebted to the Canon 1Ds
with 100mm macro lens, which took many of the pictures in this book.
No free samples or other favors were received from any of the vendors men-
tioned herein, with the exception of two sample books from MAKE, which I read
to ensure that I was not duplicating anything that had already been published.