Forrest M. Mims III

Forrest M. Mims III is an American amateur scientist who has written a prolific number of electronics books over the years. He has championed citizen science for several decades and has written a regular column in Make magazine. He has a personal website covering his activities here.

His books have been instrumental in my electronics and maker education ever since I picked up a copy of 'Getting Started in Electronics' in a Radio Shack when visiting Canada as an 11 year old.

This post covers the main interesting books he has written on science and environmental monitoring. Some of his books are still in publication.

Please note there are Amazon affiliate links in this blog post, if you buy via the Amazon links I receive a small payment.

Getting Started in Electronics

This was the first book I picked up and it is a treasure trove of hand-drawn simple circuits. The circuits and diagrams bring in all the main concepts for analogue and digital electronics. With a handful of general purpose transistors, simple resistors and capacitors and sometimes an IC or two you can create some amazing circuits. My favourite two are the Dual LED Flasher (p113) and the Random Number Generator (p120).

This book is available as a free .pdf here.

You can own a hardcopy via this Amazon link.

The circuit drawings are so classic, that Star Simpson created a range of printed circuit boards with real components next to the hand drawn diagrams to celebrate them.

Engineer's Mini-Notebook: Optoelectronics Circuits

This is one of a range of relatively short booklets which is very similar in style to Getting Started... above. It highlighted the use of solar cells at a formative age for me!

This is available as a free .pdf here.

You can own a hardcopy via this Amazon link. 

Engineer's Mini-Notebook: Science Projects

Another one in the mini-notebook range. This has a range of what would now be called 'citizen science' projects and ideas. It has wind speed and solar irradiance sensors!

 This is available as a free .pdf here.

 You can own a hardcopy via this Amazon link. 

Make: Forrest Mims' Science Experiments 

This is a full colour book bringing together and expanding on the projects Forrest wrote for Make magazine. Forrest is such a proponent of citizen science that he takes multiple readings of twilight and solar intensity every day. He even highlighted that NASA's state of the art instruments were wrong with his DIY measurements!

You can own a hardcopy via this Amazon link. Or via a direct link to Make Magazine.