[time-nuts] 1968 Scientific American Magazine: Cesium ClockStandards

Paul Alfille paul.alfille at gmail.com
Wed Dec 10 10:20:16 EST 2014


That link leads to "Semester At Sea" -- but a little googling finds
something useful: http://amasci.com/

I think the biggest loss from Scientific America was Martin Garners
Mathematics Puzzles. Everything from LISP to Conway's Game of Life...

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Jim Lux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 12/10/14, 6:31 AM, Alan Melia wrote:
>
>> Hi Dave, as a long time reader (since 1955) and subscriber I remember
>> the Amateur scientist pages ending in the 1980s. I think the contributer
>> retired. At around that time I think the many adherents formed the
>> Society of Amateur Scientists. Though I have not visited fot several
>> years the web site was www.sas.org  and I believe had pdfs of old SciAm
>> Amateur Scientist articles.
>>
>>
> Wikipedia probably has a page with the history
> Started with Ingalls and telescope making kinds of things.
>
> C.L. "Red" Stong ran the Amateur Scientist for many years and the projects
> ranged from mundane "A detailed survey of pond life" to exotic:  "How an
> ambitious amateur splits atoms"
>
> We tend to remember the exotic: potential drop linear accelerators (which
> got Science First started in business, as it happens), HeNe, CO2, and N2
> lasers, zinc sulfur propellant amateur rockets, etc.
>
> There were less exciting ones: an early one about operational amplifiers
> using some of the first hybrid microcircuit amps.
>
> Jearl Walker picked it up when Stong died, and the format changed a bit to
> be more "accessible" and more about everyday phenomena. For instance, the
> column on why honey makes the patterns it does as it drips down in a
> stream.  Less reporting on "ambitious amateur does X" and more "you can do
> Y".
>
> Then there was the Forrest Mims saga, although I don't recall seeing many
> of Mims's columns, but he had written a lot of electronics experimenting
> books for Radio Shack and so forth, so it was very hands on practical.  But
> Mims's anti-evolution stance caused a bit of heartburn.
>
> Somewhere at the end they got hooked up with Shawn(sp?) Carlson of the
> society for amateur scientists (http://www.sas.org/) who had a very
> successful run in the C.L.Stong vein. around year 2000 or so. I'm sure
> Carlson's efforts were helped by not needing an income for a few years
> after getting a MacArthur fellowship.  The SAS seemed like a tough way to
> make a living.
>
>  Then the magazine changed editorial approach in general.
>
>
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