Interview with Thomas Scarborough
Dean Huster: Actually, I didn't know where you lived.
Thomas Scarborough: In Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town must be one of the most picturesque cities in the world. I'm a minister at a large Congregational Church complex in Sea Point -- by some accounts Africa's most densely populated suburb. The World Facts Index calls Sea Point "the best microcosm of humanity".
Dean Huster: I'd wonder what came first ... the ministry or the electronics.
Thomas Scarborough: I began to do electronics in my teens. I had been in ministry for more than ten years before I had my first break as a writer. Alan Winstanley of Everyday Practical Electronics magazine had been commissioned with reviving a popular column, and I had many small designs published there. Then Alan suggested that I should try a constructional article -- a "spread". My first major article was the world's first capacitor-powered flashlight, which was just possible with the technology of the time.
I did wonder what God had in mind with my electronics -- it didn't seem to relate to my calling. But it all came together when I was accepted for a postgraduate degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. If it hadn't been for the determination and the skills that I learnt through electronics, and the funding, I doubt that I would have been able to do it. I think God may often work like that.
Dean Huster: And has electronics been primarily a hobby or was it a profession as well?
Thomas Scarborough: It has always been a hobby. I have never done it for the money. Also, I think that electronics was important for me from the point of view of being a passion amidst the pressures of ministry. I could get completely lost in design and writing. I know many ministers who are very good at something else. One shouldn't get too fixated with one thing.
What motivated me was originality. If a design didn't have some original twist, I wasn't interested. I did most of my work for Wimborne Publishing, who were superb publishers and editors from the point of view of encouraging innovation. So my work included a few groundbreaking designs, among them two new metal detector genres -- and a new disco craze, the strobe necklace. I received several awards for originality.
Dean Huster: Are you self-taught or schooled in the subject?
Thomas Scarborough: I could probably say that I was entirely self-taught. For this reason, I think, I conceived of some unorthodox things -- and often succeeded. I would first examine the characteristics of a component, and only later check the data sheets to see that I hadn't done something potentially destructive.
For instance, I discovered a first class MW receiver in the LM380N amplifier -- this IC virtually serves as a replacement for the MK484. I designed a two-component BFO metal detector around the TL071N op-amp IC. A favourite was a LED flasher which was powered off thin air -- off electromagnetic radiation -- which I achieved by pressing a CMOS IC way past its specifications on paper. None of these designs would have worked in a simulation.
Dean Huster: Over the years, did you accumulate parts or do you just purchase as the need arises?
Thomas Scarborough: I accumulated a lot of parts. Some of them were rarities that would be hard to obtain. At the same time, when you're designing for magazines, there is some risk that recycled parts have been compromised in some way. You need to be sure that your designs are repeatable, which means that you can't take chances. Also, components need to be photo-ready, which is often not the case with recycled parts. And if a magazine wants a source, you might not have it for a recycled component -- say, a relay with a particular footprint.
For all these reasons, I've mostly used new components. In fact I've often recycled my own designs. I have well over a hundred published designs, but I must have preserved less than ten. There are more of my designs in the local store than in my work-room!
Dean Huster: And do you go ahead and work in the newest technologies rather than using primary from any old stock you may have? I guess that it boils down to whether your hobby is directed by the lastest fad.
Thomas Scarborough: I once did computer programming, mainly in Pascal. I found that programs were dated within, say, three years. As I moved into electronics, I designed deliberately for longevity. I wanted people to be able to pick up a design in ten or twenty years' time, and still be able to build it. So I focused on durable concepts, durable components. The trouble with cutting edge components is that you don't know if they're here to stay. And you might well have someone contact you from, say, Tahiti or Nepal, who has trouble locating them.
The building blocks of electronics will no doubt always be the same. I like ideas, and the ideas are about combining those building blocks in new and radical ways. Once or twice, though, I've used a brand new component -- for instance, the first PICAXE.
Dean Huster: Describe your journey through the land of test equipment, what you feel is necessary and how best to equip a new and more advanced hobby.
Thomas Scarborough: Test equipment enables one to see into a circuit of course -- to see the unseen. When my first small articles were published, I only had a digital multimeter, and mostly didn't need more than that. I could often do a work-around. For instance, I could measure higher frequencies on an AM radio with BFO.
From then on, I won all my equipment as prizes. I won a superior multimeter. I won a simple storage oscilloscope. These in particular can be cheap and very useful. Then I won an advanced storage oscilloscope. A wonderful advantage of such devices is that you can freeze the action. My storage oscilloscope also has a logger, which I used most intensively for developing a Thunderstorm Monitor -- it logged the activity of the atmosphere beautifully.
Dean Huster: Have you noticed any differences in your hobby over the years and figured out the reasons for the differences, if any?
Thomas Scarborough: I have been involved in electronics since the 70s. There surely was more innovation then. Also, the emphasis in the magazines seems to have shifted from innovation and substance to flash. That in turn has raised the bar for designers -- it can be a chore to meet the requirements for a flashy article. But I sense that there still is a great hunger for innovation among hobbyists, and there is a lot of room for innovation still. We are not out of ideas.
I need hardly mention the technical advances -- microcontrollers, radio modules, surface mount components, and huge advances in the more common components -- not to speak of superior test equipment and electronics design systems. Perhaps our tools -- circuit source books and computers and so on -- inevitably shift the emphasis from originality to production.
Dean Huster: Have you any insight as to why the hobby is dying and what one could do to help revive it back to the great experimenter hobby that it once was?
Thomas Scarborough: The strange thing is that wherever you look, you see electronics. I have heard many reasons for the decline. The more convincing ones are that 30 years ago, one couldn't afford more than a handful of components. And there was time. It's the higher volume magazines that reach the shelves now. Electronics education has changed. And one editor said, "There are no girls!"
Perhaps people have little idea what fascinating things can be done with a few components. Some say that "triggers" are needed to capture enthusiasts early on -- such as robotics or computers. I think the Internet has done much to revive the hobby, with some electronics websites having tens of thousands of hits a month. They generate more than half of my electronics correspondence now, with about half of that coming from the Third World.
Thomas Scarborough: In Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town must be one of the most picturesque cities in the world. I'm a minister at a large Congregational Church complex in Sea Point -- by some accounts Africa's most densely populated suburb. The World Facts Index calls Sea Point "the best microcosm of humanity".
Dean Huster: I'd wonder what came first ... the ministry or the electronics.
Thomas Scarborough: I began to do electronics in my teens. I had been in ministry for more than ten years before I had my first break as a writer. Alan Winstanley of Everyday Practical Electronics magazine had been commissioned with reviving a popular column, and I had many small designs published there. Then Alan suggested that I should try a constructional article -- a "spread". My first major article was the world's first capacitor-powered flashlight, which was just possible with the technology of the time.
I did wonder what God had in mind with my electronics -- it didn't seem to relate to my calling. But it all came together when I was accepted for a postgraduate degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. If it hadn't been for the determination and the skills that I learnt through electronics, and the funding, I doubt that I would have been able to do it. I think God may often work like that.
Dean Huster: And has electronics been primarily a hobby or was it a profession as well?
Thomas Scarborough: It has always been a hobby. I have never done it for the money. Also, I think that electronics was important for me from the point of view of being a passion amidst the pressures of ministry. I could get completely lost in design and writing. I know many ministers who are very good at something else. One shouldn't get too fixated with one thing.
What motivated me was originality. If a design didn't have some original twist, I wasn't interested. I did most of my work for Wimborne Publishing, who were superb publishers and editors from the point of view of encouraging innovation. So my work included a few groundbreaking designs, among them two new metal detector genres -- and a new disco craze, the strobe necklace. I received several awards for originality.
Dean Huster: Are you self-taught or schooled in the subject?
Thomas Scarborough: I could probably say that I was entirely self-taught. For this reason, I think, I conceived of some unorthodox things -- and often succeeded. I would first examine the characteristics of a component, and only later check the data sheets to see that I hadn't done something potentially destructive.
For instance, I discovered a first class MW receiver in the LM380N amplifier -- this IC virtually serves as a replacement for the MK484. I designed a two-component BFO metal detector around the TL071N op-amp IC. A favourite was a LED flasher which was powered off thin air -- off electromagnetic radiation -- which I achieved by pressing a CMOS IC way past its specifications on paper. None of these designs would have worked in a simulation.
Dean Huster: Over the years, did you accumulate parts or do you just purchase as the need arises?
Thomas Scarborough: I accumulated a lot of parts. Some of them were rarities that would be hard to obtain. At the same time, when you're designing for magazines, there is some risk that recycled parts have been compromised in some way. You need to be sure that your designs are repeatable, which means that you can't take chances. Also, components need to be photo-ready, which is often not the case with recycled parts. And if a magazine wants a source, you might not have it for a recycled component -- say, a relay with a particular footprint.
For all these reasons, I've mostly used new components. In fact I've often recycled my own designs. I have well over a hundred published designs, but I must have preserved less than ten. There are more of my designs in the local store than in my work-room!
Dean Huster: And do you go ahead and work in the newest technologies rather than using primary from any old stock you may have? I guess that it boils down to whether your hobby is directed by the lastest fad.
Thomas Scarborough: I once did computer programming, mainly in Pascal. I found that programs were dated within, say, three years. As I moved into electronics, I designed deliberately for longevity. I wanted people to be able to pick up a design in ten or twenty years' time, and still be able to build it. So I focused on durable concepts, durable components. The trouble with cutting edge components is that you don't know if they're here to stay. And you might well have someone contact you from, say, Tahiti or Nepal, who has trouble locating them.
The building blocks of electronics will no doubt always be the same. I like ideas, and the ideas are about combining those building blocks in new and radical ways. Once or twice, though, I've used a brand new component -- for instance, the first PICAXE.
Dean Huster: Describe your journey through the land of test equipment, what you feel is necessary and how best to equip a new and more advanced hobby.
Thomas Scarborough: Test equipment enables one to see into a circuit of course -- to see the unseen. When my first small articles were published, I only had a digital multimeter, and mostly didn't need more than that. I could often do a work-around. For instance, I could measure higher frequencies on an AM radio with BFO.
From then on, I won all my equipment as prizes. I won a superior multimeter. I won a simple storage oscilloscope. These in particular can be cheap and very useful. Then I won an advanced storage oscilloscope. A wonderful advantage of such devices is that you can freeze the action. My storage oscilloscope also has a logger, which I used most intensively for developing a Thunderstorm Monitor -- it logged the activity of the atmosphere beautifully.
Dean Huster: Have you noticed any differences in your hobby over the years and figured out the reasons for the differences, if any?
Thomas Scarborough: I have been involved in electronics since the 70s. There surely was more innovation then. Also, the emphasis in the magazines seems to have shifted from innovation and substance to flash. That in turn has raised the bar for designers -- it can be a chore to meet the requirements for a flashy article. But I sense that there still is a great hunger for innovation among hobbyists, and there is a lot of room for innovation still. We are not out of ideas.
I need hardly mention the technical advances -- microcontrollers, radio modules, surface mount components, and huge advances in the more common components -- not to speak of superior test equipment and electronics design systems. Perhaps our tools -- circuit source books and computers and so on -- inevitably shift the emphasis from originality to production.
Dean Huster: Have you any insight as to why the hobby is dying and what one could do to help revive it back to the great experimenter hobby that it once was?
Thomas Scarborough: The strange thing is that wherever you look, you see electronics. I have heard many reasons for the decline. The more convincing ones are that 30 years ago, one couldn't afford more than a handful of components. And there was time. It's the higher volume magazines that reach the shelves now. Electronics education has changed. And one editor said, "There are no girls!"
Perhaps people have little idea what fascinating things can be done with a few components. Some say that "triggers" are needed to capture enthusiasts early on -- such as robotics or computers. I think the Internet has done much to revive the hobby, with some electronics websites having tens of thousands of hits a month. They generate more than half of my electronics correspondence now, with about half of that coming from the Third World.
