Best books for people changing fields?

It's also somewhat more technical than the ARRL handbook, which is often a good thing.

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Hi:

When do you think your 2nd edition book will be available?

It was due to the publisher this week, but I got an extension to mid-September. Figuring six months for copy-editing and production, sometime early next spring is probably a good guess.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Osche "Optical Detection Theory for Laser Applications" Wiley (2002) LADAR centric, heavy on statistics, coherent and direct detection - seems like a good in depth compliment to those sections in your book.

Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids vI-III ed. Palik. Horrifically expensive, but I constantly refer to this. I'm fortunate enough to have bought the data tables from the first 2 volumes from OSA on a floppy when they were available. Saves mucho typing errors.

Hall and Jackson ed. "Physics and Technology of Laser Resonators" Hilger (1989) I often refer to ch.1 for Gaussian beam basics and ch. 9 and 10 by Sasnett and Goethals for high order beam propagation (M^2) and phase space stuff, which can be nice for establishing physical limits on what optics can do. Other chapters are useful if you're using a particular type of resonator. A similar book by Anan'ev I wound up never referring to.

Macleod "Thin Film Optical Filters" if you worry a lot about electronic filters, how about optical ones? Also good for basics of reflection and transmission from a surface. Even if you don't make them there is good information on uses and physical limits to these devices that can pay off when looking at the system level, so you don't wind up trying to make a interference filter do more than it can. Also JDSU has their Interference Filter Handbook which covers a lot of the nitty gritty at

- they want real money for it, but I'm sure if you order something from them you could get them to throw in a copy.

For mechanical stuff, even though it is more of a popularization than a real text I always find it entertaining to look at J. E. Gordon "Structures" and/or "The New Science of Strong Materials", light and fluffy - but that is generally all I need.

Also there are some freely available pdf versions of things - not always the easiest way to read something, but free and available immediately The EO/IR Handbook by Accetta and Shumaker was done under a government grant and pdf's are avialable at the Defense Technical Information Center at

I actually wrote up a nomination for "Building Electro Optical Systems..." for this award, I got a reply from someone at OSA or SPIE, but it appears my nomination got lost in the ether, as I didn't see it among the books nominated when the award was made.

Thanks again to all who made suggestions about a list of good books for people getting in to electro-optics. Here's a draft of the annotated version for the book:

Any other comments or suggestions are welcome.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

What's the anticipated price? Any discount for your NG "advisors"? :>

Barry

It should be about the same, or even slightly less if everybody here puts in an advance order. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Your symbols indicating the level of difficulty for each book is a nice touch.

Howard

One book i would really like to have is the equivalent of

Brigham. The Fast Fourier Transform

for the z-transform. Haven't ever found one.

Needing a book that doesn't exist is one excellent reason to write it. You learn an amazing amount just filling in the gaps in your explanations, not to mention all the new material you have to go through.

I'm looking forward to Larkin on Electronics from Scratch and JKK on Z-transforms (You have to put in a section on flipflops too.)

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

With practical FT emphasis Iizuka Engineering Optics or the new edition Elements of Photonics.

I found useful Marcuse Light Transmission Optics.

I would include Smith Modern Lens design with many lens examples. An alternative is Laikin Lens design. Another interesting book Shannon The Art and Science of Optical Design.

I am not sure where this book should go Graeme Photodiode Amplifiers

- Op Amp Solutions - to detectors or electronics, but it must be included. The book has a lot of circuits, theory about the subject.

More classical book is Measures - Laser remote sensing. Recent knowledges are collected in Weitkamp (es) Lidar or Fujii and Fukuchi (eds.) Laser remote sensing. Another interesting Kovalec and Eichinger Elastic Lidar.

For those who interested in the technical part of spectroscopy - Demtroeder Laser spectroscopy. It has grown with every edition and the last was split into 2 volumes :)

Where is Numerical Recipes?

Hodgson and Weber Laser resonators and beam propagation Svelto Principles of lasers, this one has a problem book with included solutions Cerullo etc Problems in laser physics.

Regards.

Lens design is beyond the scope of the book, or I'd probably put that one in. I have the Kingslake books because of the great heuristics, but Smith MLD is much more computer-oriented, and hence useful mainly for lens designers. Smith MOE is more general.

The Shannon book is not a good one--I knew more before reading it than I did afterwards. I bought it for full price and threw it out.

I don't like the Graeme book much--he says that op amp TIAs are the best you can do, which is nonsense. That's contributed to a lot of crappy front end designs, which is what I spend all of Chapter 18 trying to fix.

What do you like about those ones?

I've never seen it. What do you like about it?

It's in there--see the formatted list I posted a couple of days ago:

What do you like about those ones? Do they cover important things that Siegman, Koechner, and Goldwasser don't?

Thanks again,

Phil Hobbs

This book has answered a bunch of questions I had in several different fields:

Phosphor Handbook, 2nd Edition William M. Yen, Hajime Yamamoto (Editor), Shigeo Shionoya (Editor), Shigeo(decease) Shionoya (Editor) ISBN-13: 9780849335648

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Interesting, thanks. I'll see if I can find one.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

"Phil Hobbs" wrote

Indeed, however my own book is still a work in progress... :-)

Besides as per Ecclesiastes 12:12..... :-)

New American Standard Bible (©1995) But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995) Be warned, my children, against anything more than these. People never stop writing books. Too much studying will wear out your body.

King James Bible And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

American King James Version And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

American Standard Version And furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Bible in Basic English And further, my son, take note of this: of the making of books there is no end, and much learning is a weariness to the flesh.

Douay-Rheims Bible More than these, my son, require not. Of making many books there is no end: and much study is an affliction of the flesh.

Darby Bible Translation And besides, my son, be warned by them: of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

English Revised Version And furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Webster's Bible Translation And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

World English Bible Furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Young's Literal Translation And further, from these, my son, be warned; the making of many books hath no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

etc., etc..

My favourite is the Revised Standard: Ecclesiastes 12:11 The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings which are given by one Shepherd.

Ecclesiastes 12:12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

On the other hand,

The end of that verse is why I want to encourage folks like John L. and Jim T. to write books before they hang up their soldering irons (or mice, in Jim's case).

(If you can rip a verse bleeding from its context, so can I. A priest friend of mine says, "A text without a context is nothing but a pretext.") :-U

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

I do not recommend holding your breath. I would have to really, really learn the z transform first.

But they wrote that before anybody invented the Internet.

Yup. I'm trying to pass on the high-end stuff to the kids who will eventually own my company (and mail me checks now and then?)

But I think too many people don't understand the basics of electronics, starting with physics, electrostatics, stuff like that. The challenge is to write the preface volume to AoE, a starting place for laymen and history majors, something that's clear and intuitive. And the real challenge will be to slip a little math in.

John