Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims III may be my favorite book for someone who wants to begin learning electronics.
I’ve loved this book for years. It comes out of the great Radio Shack electronics era, and there’s still something wonderful about its simple, hand-drawn diagrams, handwritten explanations, and straightforward approach.
In this video, I flip through the entire book and talk about why I still recommend it to beginners and use it with my own students.
I think Getting Started in Electronics is an excellent first step before moving on to larger and more technical books such as Practical Electronics for Inventors and The Art of Electronics. It introduces the components, circuits, symbols, and basic ideas you need without burying you in mathematics and theory.
For me, it’s also a reminder of an era when you could walk into Radio Shack, buy some components, pick up a Forrest Mims book or booklet, and start experimenting. I am convinced that the many computing revolutions of the past 40 years have their roots in garage hobbyists and inventors reading through books like this and building circuits for fun.
If you’re interested in electronics, robotics, circuit building, or just want to understand what all those resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits actually do, this is a wonderful place to begin.
#Electronics #ForrestMims #RadioShack #Arduino #Robotics #STEM