In article ,
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Hank wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
What about Seely? That's what we used in my freshman EE class and it seemed
pretty good.

If the Seely text you are talking about is "Electronic Engineering"
(McGraw-Hill, 1956), yes, that is a good text, and much better than
Terman's 4th edition (also 1956). Millman-Seely "Electronics" (1941) is
also reasonably good. Seely 1956, along with Millman & Taub "Pulse and
Digital Circuits" 1956---these are after my "initial training" time.
Also Korn&Korn (1952) on analog computers and op amps. I acquired
these texts back in the mid-late 1950's, but in 1956, I was already
working for James Millen. A lot of my thinking about EE training in
that era came from teaching in Tektronix 1962-64, and what we had to
focus on to bring a new-hire experienced engineer up to speed on the
"Tekronix Way." I still call that "All the stuff that's not in Terman
and Radar Electronic Fundamentals."

I was thinking of Seely's _Electron Tube Circuits_ which is the first time
I actually saw the method of load lines. I'd fixed TV sets and done the
military electronics training and thought I had a good idea of how the
thing worked until I read Seely.

You're ringing some bells here. The texts I cited are ones that I have
on my shelves, and I see that "Electron Tube Circuits" is a 1950 text
that I do not have.

I, too, was very late to learn about load lines and some other pretty
fundamental stuff. I recall taking a text out of a library that covered
graphical methods for working with tube circuits, one being use of load
lines, and have wondered for years what that text was. Can't remember
the exact year, either, but early fifties is about right.

Korn and Korn is an interesting book about techniques that basically don't
exist any longer, whereas anything in Seely or in the Radiotron handbook
is probably still in use with jfets.

I think Korn and Korn was rather instrumental for us when we designed
the Tek 547 scope. Tek's original sweep circuits (511, etc.) were lifts
from the P4 synchroscope setup (WWII MIT/Harvard radiation labs). Quite
a step up from the relaxation oscillator "sine wave sweep" in the early
RCA and most of the Dumont scopes. However, Tek moved to a "Miller
Integrator" sweep, which was nothing but an op amp circuit. Getting
smart in general about op amps was something I had to develop while I
was teaching for Tek, and Korn & Korn was a bellwether for me.

I still remember having a design review of something that included a
built-up 2N222 type "or" circuit that was bogging down until I realized
that none of my reviewers understood basic transistors. That was ca. 1970.
It was "back to basics" time to deal with that.

Don't worry, the same thing is true today. Now they know digital circuits
but not transistors...

Yeah, tell me about it. That design review was a real shock to me, and
fortunately, I was able to segué my way into techniques I'd used in
commercial courses for tube engineers learning semiconductors. Since
then, I've learned in other courses that a good syllabus has to have a
"back to basics" section, often billed as "special considerations when
doing [whatever the course was supposed to really be about]. Bring out
the 19th century stuff, like Kirchoff and Thevenin, then throw in
some impedance stuff---make sure the troops are all up to speed before
trying to move forward.

Nothing like a good Tek 575 as a teaching tool---and pretty handy to
have (I have one) when trying to replace germaniums with silicons in an
audio totem pole circuit.

Hank