General > General Technical Chat
Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
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Conrad Hoffman:
Some years ago I bought an HP instrument from Don and talked to him on the phone. Great guy. I've used his books over the years and pre-net they were a great source of info. I've worked in various disciplines he's written about over the years and found his writings to be spot on, in spite of what marketing and optimisim would have you believe.

RHB, my library is far smaller than yours, but IMHO a decent technical library is a tremendous technical advantage. Not everything is on the 'net and many things aren't covered in the necessary depth if you'r working in the field. Heck, I still refer to Terman quite often. For practical hands-on how-to-do-it, Joe Carr wrote some very good popular RF books. Especially if you've never wound a toroid. Was never a big Mims fan.

The only thing I can't seem to figure out is if Don is still with us. Anybody know for sure?
bd139:
He is. He had an amusing stab I suspect at this thread here: https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu18.shtml#d11.08.18
rhb:
Don is 78 and apparently  wandering around the desert on archeological projects among other things. I don't think he has slowed down a bit.  He was apparently on a camping trip when this thread started which made me a little concerned.  But then he reappeared with a post about how to tell if camp coffee is strong enough.  If the anvil sinks it's too weak. If it floats it's just right.  If it dissolves it's too strong.  Followed a few days later by the post in reference to this thread.

Out of curiosity I asked and Don was kind enough to offer an estimate of about 1.4 million copies of the TTL Cookbook. So he probably sold over 10 million technical books.  The TTL Cookbook went through at least 3 printings the first year it was out.  John Lenk, Joe Carr and Horowitz and Hill are the only writers in electronics for the popular market that come close.  And AoE is rather upscale by an order of magnitude from Don or Joe.  Which  is a large part of why we had to wait so long for the 3rd edition.

I just had a quick browse through the 33 ft of electronics books which are actually in the correct section of my library.  I have as many or more books by Don than by Lenk and Carr combined.  Microprocessor books are shelved in the computer section, but I can't think of anyone who was as prolific as Don.  With the possible exception of Doug DeMaw.  "Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur" by DeMaw and Hayward is a classic.  For the life of me I don't understand why ARRL let it go out of print.  "Experimental Methods in RF Design" is great, but it really presumes you've mastered the contents of Solid State Design. Doug cranked out a slew of QRP project books aimed at the novice builder who wanted to be able to say he had built a radio from scratch.

I was on the EMRFD list for about a year, but when a post I made showed up 4-5 days later I got angry and unsubscribed.  By the time it appeared it was no longer relevant.   And after posting rather sparsely for such a long period, having to pass approval of a moderator was offensive.  A very large amount of the traffic was people looking for obsolete parts so they could duplicate old designs.  So not even close to the level of this forum.  My all time favorite here is still the "Has anyone built a mass spec" thread.  A few posts in was someone who had built two.  An academic instrument and then a few years later a commercial instrument for which he had a $750K budget.

The OP is too young to grasp that those of us over 50 something consider "guru" a joke.  The younger crowd take it seriously.  With his PostScript skills I half expected Don to whip up a union card, age it a little bit and post a photo.

My library cost me a lot of money.  But I also made a lot of money from having it.  If a topic came up at work that no one was familiar with, odds were pretty good I had references on the topic.  So in a day or two I knew more than anyone else as I could read at 600 wpm and faster if I was skimming massive technical manuals looking for specific information.  Even skimming I would have enough comprehension and retention to have learned quite a lot of contextual information. 

I also never cared for Mims' work.  Those really were just app note circuits redrawn by hand.  But I also had Don's books long before Mims started writing.  Mims  was hanging out with an Air Force buddy, Ed Roberts, designing instrumentation packages for model rocketry when Don published the TTL Cookbook.  And then Ed designed the Altair 8800, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and the computer industry was turned upside down.

Mims caused a huge commotion by launching some Estes based rockets in Nam.  I think he was in the Saigon area.  They sent a helicopter gunship to investigate IIRC.  This was when Charlie was  rocketing Saigon on a regular basis using simple X brace to hold a Soviet or Chinese made rocket and a primitive timer to allow them to get away before it took off.
rsjsouza:
I didn't know Forest Mims due to the language barrier when I was a kid, but a few years ago my wife got me a NOS copy of his book "Siliconnections" and is, in fact, a great story.
However, if memory does not fail me, Don Lancaster's TTL cookbook was printed in portuguese - I recall the blue cover from a very early age in my life.
rhb:
The foreign language editions made Don's number a guesstimate as they were not too sure how accurate those numbers were.

That was a great book by Mims.  Very lucky guy. He was in the right place at the right time. 
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