Hands-On Electronics November 1988

Copyright © 1988 Poptronix, Inc.; used by permission.

Contents, page 1
Editorial, page 2

Each page is a 150 dpi jpg image.
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Popular Electronics comes home! In September, 1958 I had the good fortune to join the staff of Popular Electronics as Managing Editor. It was my first magazine position; my previous experience had been in writing and editing equipment manuals and hard-cover books. For an electronics buff and novice experimenter like me, that new position was the chance of a lifetime. The thrill of the very first moment I entered the editorial office has stayed with me till this very day. Popular Electronics was first published in February, 1943 as a section of Radio Craft magazine, a Gernsback publication. The section was discontinued some five years later, and the Popular Electronics title was sold to the Ziff-Davis Publications group in 1954. The rest, as they say, is history. Almost everyone involved in electronics knows of Popular Electronics' dramatic rise in popularity and circulation during the period between 1959 and 1961. That popularity continued, and grew, until the early 1980's when the magazine changed its editorial direction, and its name to Computers and Electronics. Long before the magazine's demise, in 1963 to be precise, I left to join the Davis Publications group. There I served as Editor-in-Chief of Radio-TV Experimenter, Elementary Electronics, Whites Radio Log, Hi-Fi Stereo Buyers Guide, and a host of annual and semi-annual electronics publications. I left Davis in 1981 and joined Gernsback Publications, Inc., the publisher of Hands-on Electronics magazine. Sometimes the paths and fortunes of the publishing industry take some strange and surprising turns. The original title of Hands-on Electronics was Special Projects. And now Hands-on Electronics will change its name once again to Popular Electronics. The transition has already begun, as is evident by the two logo titles on this month's cover. The name change sits well with me because I always had a strong feeling for the Popular Electronics title. In its heyday, the scope and content of that magazine truly addressed and served the needs of the electronics experimenter. The new Popular Electronics will revive that tradition; it will strive to serve the electronics hobbyist in the future as well as it did in the past. Julian S. Martin, KA2GUN Editor