Hands-On Electronics was an electronics hobbyist magazine published by Gernsback Publications in the United States from 1980 to 1989. [1]
The magazine started as Radio-Electronics Special Projects in 1980. [1] This was nominally a quarterly supplement to Radio-Electronics that had 10 issues from a single 1980 issue to the Spring 1984 issue. The Summer 1984 issue was renamed Hands-On Electronics. [1] It became bi-monthly in January 1986 and monthly in November 1986. The title was changed to Popular Electronics in February 1989 and was published until December 1999. The longtime Radio Electronics editor, Larry Steckler, was the publisher and owner. (Having purchased Gernsback Publications from the Gernsback family.) Julian S. Martin was the editor.
The early issues were just a collection of construction projects. By 1984 there were monthly columns on shortwave listening, amateur radio, and computers. After Ziff-Davis changed Popular Electronics to Computers & Electronics , Hands-On Electronics attracted those hobbyist readers. In April 1985 Ziff-Davis stopped publishing Computers & Electronics and Hands-On Electronics purchased the title in June 1988. The magazine became monthly and added the Popular Electronics logo to the cover in November 1988. In February 1989 the magazine was published with the name Popular Electronics. [1]
Hugo Gernsback was an American editor and magazine publisher whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the "Hugos".
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines. According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. It was the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.
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Popular Electronics was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine". In April 1957, Ziff-Davis reported an average net paid circulation of 240,151 copies. Popular Electronics was published until October 1982 when, in November 1982, Ziff-Davis launched a successor magazine, Computers & Electronics. During its last year of publication by Ziff-Davis, Popular Electronics reported an average monthly circulation of 409,344 copies. The title was sold to Gernsback Publications, and their Hands-On Electronics magazine was renamed to Popular Electronics in February 1989, and published until December 1999. The Popular Electronics trademark was then acquired by John August Media, who revived the magazine, the digital edition of which is hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com, along with sister titles, Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Astronomy.
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Archived Hands On Electronics magazines on the Internet Archive