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 <jim...@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. > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/ > mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.