Forrest Mims
Encyclopedia
Forrest M. Mims III is an amateur scientist, magazine columnist, and author of the popular Getting Started in Electronics and Engineer's Mini-Notebook series of instructional books that was originally sold in Radio Shack
Radio shack
Radio shack is a slang term for a room or structure for housing radio equipment.-History:In the early days of radio, equipment was experimental and home-built. The first radio transmitters used a noisy spark to generate radio waves and were often housed in a garage or shed. When radio was first...

 electronics stores. Mims graduated from Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...

 in 1966 with a major in government and minors in English and history. He became a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force.

Although he has no formal academic training in science, Mims has had a successful career as a science author, researcher, lecturer and syndicated columnist. His series of electronics books sold over 7 million copies and he is widely regarded as one of the world's most prolific citizen scientists. Mims does scientific studies in many fields using instruments he designs and makes and he has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, often with professional scientists as co-authors. Much of his research deals with ecology and environmental science. A simple instrument he developed to measure the ozone layer
Ozone layer
The ozone layer is a layer in Earth's atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone . This layer absorbs 97–99% of the Sun's high frequency ultraviolet light, which is potentially damaging to the life forms on Earth...

 earned him a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1993. In December 2008 Discover Magazine named Mims one of the "50 Best Brains in Science."

Mims edited The Citizen Scientist—the journal of the Society for Amateur Scientists
Society for Amateur Scientists
The Society for Amateur Scientists is a non-profit 501 organization dedicated to "helping ordinary people do extraordinary science".-History:...

 from 2003 to 2010. He is also the Chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science. He also teaches electronics and atmospheric science at the University of the Nations
University of the Nations
The University of the Nations is a global Christian university with branch campuses in 600 locations in 142 countries, providing coursework in over 100 languages around the world. Its largest locations are in Kona, Hawaii , Jeju, South Korea, and Perth, Australia...

, an unaccredited Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 university in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a non-profit professional association headquartered in New York City that is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence...

, the National Science Teachers Association
National Science Teachers Association
The National Science Teachers Association , founded in 1944 and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is an association of science teachers in the United States and is the largest organization of science teachers worldwide...

 and several scientific societies. Mims is an advocate for Intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

 and serves as a Fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design
International Society for Complexity, Information and Design
The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design was a non-profit professional society that promoted intelligent design...

 and the Discovery Institute
Discovery Institute
The Discovery Institute is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design...

. He is also a skeptic of global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

.

Early life and education

Forrest Mims was born in 1944 in Houston, Texas to Forrest M. Mims Jr. (1923–1996) and Ollieve E. (Dunn) Mims (1924–1995). He was the oldest of five children, two boys and three girls. Mims' father was an Air Force pilot and the family lived on military bases from Alaska to Florida but their home state was Texas.

Mims was interested in science at an early age, and he built an analog computer as a high school science fair project in 1960. While memorizing his Latin class vocabulary words, Mims conceived a computer that could translate twenty words from one language to another. The input was six potentiometer
Potentiometer
A potentiometer , informally, a pot, is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used , it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat. Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on...

s (variable resistors) each having a dial with 26 letters. Entering the first six letters of the word on the potentiometers set a total electrical resistance. The memory of known words was a bank of 20 screwdriver-adjustable trimmer resistors. (Mims later referred to this as "Screwdriver-Programmable Read Only Memory", SPROM.) The memory was searched by a motor driven switch that compared the resistance of the input word with each memory resistor. When a match was found the motor would stop and one of 20 output lamps would be on. This was not a practical language translator, but it was an impressive science fair project for the early 1960s. Mims wrote an article for the December 1987 issue of Modern Electronics
Modern Electronics
Modern Electronics was a hobbyist magazine published from October 1984 to March 1991. It became Computer Craft in April 1991 and the name changed again to MicroComputer Journal in January 1994. Modern Electronics, Inc. was owned by CQ Communications, Inc, the publishers of CQ Amateur Radio.Art...

describing his homebrew analog computer complete with schematics and photographs.

Mims entered Texas A&M University in the fall of 1962 as a physics major. The mathematics courses convinced him to major in liberal arts. He graduated in 1966 with a major in government with minors in English and history. When Mims started at Texas A&M it was an all male military school. In 1964 the university began admitting women and membership in the Corps of Cadets became optional.

Mims pursued his electronics avocation
Avocation
An avocation is an activity that one engages in as a hobby outside one's main occupation. There are many examples of people whose professions were the ways that they made their livings, but for whom their activities outside of their workplaces were their true passions in life...

 while at A&M. His great-grandfather was blind, and this led Mims to create a travel aid for the blind. This device was similar to RADAR except it used the newly developed infrared-emitting diode to send intense pulses of light that reflected from obstacles. The returned light was converted to an audio tone that increased in amplitude as the distance to the obstacles was reduced. The infrared diodes had just been introduced by Texas Instruments in 1965 and sold for $365 each. Mims visited Dr. Edwin Bonin of Texas Instruments and explained his project. After reviewing the finished design, Dr. Bonin sent Mims three infrared-emitting diodes.

Mims arranged to exhibit his prototype at the annual Texas Medical Association convention held in Austin in April 1966. Wearing his Texas A&M Corps of Cadets uniform, Mims demonstrated his "electronic eyes" to the convention attendees. Mims and his device were widely reported in Texas newspapers. The San Antonio Light wrote, "Although a political science major at A&M, Mims's second interest obviously is 'science and inventing things.'" Mims would continue to improve this device over the next several years. Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics is an American magazine first published January 11, 1902 by H. H. Windsor, and has been owned since 1958 by the Hearst Corporation...

described how the device would fit on a pair of eyeglasses in August 1972

Air Force and MITS

After graduating from Texas A&M in 1966, Mims became a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to Tan Son Nhut Air Base
Tan Son Nhut Air Base
Tan Son Nhut Air Base was a Republic of Vietnam Air Force facility. It is located near the city of Saigon in southern Vietnam. The United States used it as a major base during the Vietnam War , stationing Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine units there...

 near Saigon, Vietnam as an intelligence officer in early 1967. Mims had been interested in model rocketry since high school and brought a supply of rockets to Vietnam. He used a nearby horse racing track as a launch site to test his rocket guidance systems. After an Army helicopter gunship came to check out the rocket launches, Mims learned to notify military authorities before launching rockets at the race track. A night launch from the roof of his apartment house caused an alert at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Mims' rocket exploits were reported in the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes (newspaper)
Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...

.

Mims tested his infrared travel aid at the Saigon School for Blind Boys and Girls in Saigon and the story appeared in many US newspapers. Colonel David R. Jones of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory learned of Mims's experiments on a trip to Vietnam and arranged for Mims to be assigned to the Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Colonel Jones had to make special arrangements because Mims did not have the required engineering degree. Mims arrived at the lab in March 1968 and worked on various laser projects.

Mims organized the Albuquerque Model Rocketry Club to interest students in model rocketry. The club soon had 40 members and held meetings at Del Norte High School and the Albuquerque Academy
Albuquerque Academy
Albuquerque Academy is an independent co-educational day school for grades six through twelve located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. It is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest and the New Mexico State Department of Education. Albuquerque Academy is also a member of...

. In July 1969 several club members attended the Southwestern Model Rocket Conference at Eastern New Mexico University
Eastern New Mexico University
Eastern New Mexico University , frequently called Eastern, is a state university in Portales, Roosevelt County, New Mexico, USA...

. George Flynn, Publisher of Model Rocketry magazine
Model Rocketry (magazine)
Model Rocketry was an American hobbyist magazine published from October 1968 to February 1972. The Editor and Publisher was George Flynn and the Managing Editor was Gordon Mandell. The magazine was owned by the editorial staff and the paid circulation reached 15,000 by 1970.The launch of Sputnik in...

, attended the conference where he interviewed Mims and some of the club members. The club president, high school student Ford Davis, gave a presentation on a miniature radio transmitter developed by the club that could relay data from a model rocket in flight. Mims, the club's senior advisor, told Flynn about the various sensors and telemetry equipment used by the club. Flynn invited Mims to write an article about his "Transistorized Tracking Light for Night Launched Model Rockets" and it was published in the September 1969 issue of Model Rocketry. Mims earned $93.50 for his first article as a professional writer and became a regular contributor to Model Rocketry.

Ed Roberts worked with Mims at the Weapons Laboratory and was also interested in electronics and model rockets. Roberts augmented his Air Force salary with an off-duty company, Reliance Engineering. Mims, Roberts and two other co-workers decided they could design and sell model rocket electronics kits to hobbyists. The December 1969 issue of Model Rocketry carried a press release written by Mims announcing that Reliance Engineering had formed a subsidiary company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems was an American electronics company founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico that began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971 and personal computers in 1975. Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims founded MITS in December 1969 to produce miniaturized telemetry...

. They designed and built the telemetry modules in their homes and garages but they were only able to sell a few hundred units.

Mims background in the new technology of light-emitting diodes allowed him to sell a feature story to Popular Electronics
Popular Electronics
Popular Electronics was an American magazine started by Ziff-Davis Publishing in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine". The circulation was 240,151 in April 1957 and 400,000 by 1963. Ziff-Davis published Popular...

magazine. Their monthly circulation was 400,000 readers compared to Model Rocketry circulation of 15,000. The five-page article would give an overview of the device physics and typical applications; it would be featured on the November 1970 cover. Mims asked the editors if they also wanted a project story and they agreed. Ed Roberts and Mims developed an LED communicator that would transmit voice on an infrared beam of light to a receiver hundreds of feet away. Readers could buy a kit of parts to build the Opticom LED Communicator from MITS for $15. MITS sold just over hundred kits. MITS was not making money on the kits and magazine articles paid $400. Mims was out of the Air Force and wanted to pursue a career as a technology writer. Roberts bought out his original partners and focused the company on emerging market of electronic calculators. The January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics featured Roberts' Altair 8800
Altair 8800
The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were...

 computer. Roberts asked Mims to write the Altair 8800 user’s manual in return for an assembled Altair, which Mims donated to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in 1987.

Author

Les Solomon, the Technical Editor of Popular Electronics, liked to meet the magazine's authors when he was on vacation and in 1970 he visited Forrest Mims and Ed Roberts in New Mexico. Solomon gave them advice on selling project kits such as the "Opticom LED Communicator" but Mims was really interested in becoming a full time writer. Solomon explained the magazine publishing business and helped Mims get articles placed in Popular Electronics. Mims also wrote for other magazines; "Experiment With a $32 Solid State Laser" was featured on the June 1972 cover of Radio-Electronics. In October 1975 Mims convinced Art Salsberg, Editor of Popular Electronics, to offer him a monthly column, the "Experimenter's Corner". He later added two additional columns, "Project of the Month" and "Solid-State Developments". Mims wrote for this magazine until it ceased publication in April 1985. Meanwhile, Salsberg had started another hobbyist magazine, Modern Electronics
Modern Electronics
Modern Electronics was a hobbyist magazine published from October 1984 to March 1991. It became Computer Craft in April 1991 and the name changed again to MicroComputer Journal in January 1994. Modern Electronics, Inc. was owned by CQ Communications, Inc, the publishers of CQ Amateur Radio.Art...

; and Mims wrote a monthly column and was a contributing editor.

In the 1970s, electronic components such as resistors, capacitors, transistors and even integrated circuits were common enough that interesting projects could be constructed at home with simple tools. The Radio Shack
Radio shack
Radio shack is a slang term for a room or structure for housing radio equipment.-History:In the early days of radio, equipment was experimental and home-built. The first radio transmitters used a noisy spark to generate radio waves and were often housed in a garage or shed. When radio was first...

 stores sold books that featured projects that could be constructed using the components then being sold in their stores. In 1972 Mims wrote two hobbyist project books for Radio Shack.
His books could be understood by hobbyist and were illustrated with hand-drawn schematics diagrams. This style proved popular and Radio Shack commissioned 36 books between 1972 and 2003. By the 1990s, components became smaller and it was difficult to assemble electronics projects with low-cost hand-tools. The interest in electronic kits and experiments declined, and in 2003 Radio Shack scaled back their project books and components.

Mims also wrote technical books on semiconductor lasers and light-emitting diodes. He coauthored a book on electronics calculators with his friend, Ed Roberts in 1974.

Mims has written for wide variety of general-interest and technical magazines. In the 1990s he started writing about atmospheric science and his measurements of ultraviolet radiation and the Earth's ozone layer. More than twenty of his papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Scientific American

In May 1988 Mims wrote to Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

 proposing that he take over The Amateur Scientist
The Amateur Scientist
The Amateur Scientist was a column in the Scientific American, and was the definitive "how-to" resource for citizen-scientists for over 72 years , making it the longest running column in Scientific American's history...

 column, which needed a new editor. Despite concern about his views, he was asked to write some sample columns, which he did in 1990. Mims was not offered the position, due, Mims alleges, to his Christian and creationist
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...

 views. The ACLU
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...

 of Texas offered to take his case, but he declined.

Eric Pianka

In 2006 Mims expressed concern with a March 3, 2006 lecture by scientist Eric Pianka
Eric Pianka
Eric Rodger Pianka is an American biologist, whose work includes herpetology and evolutionary ecology. His textbook, Evolutionary Ecology is considered a classic, and his writings for the general public and television appearances have made him an influential figure.-Youth:Pianka was born in...

. In this lectures at the 109th Annual Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science held at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, Mims alleges that Pianka advocated genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

 with a genetically enhanced Ebola virus
Ebola virus
Ebola virus causes severe disease in humans and in nonhuman primates in the form of viral hemorrhagic fever. EBOV is a Select Agent, World Health Organization Risk Group 4 Pathogen , National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Category A Priority Pathogen,...

 with the goal of exterminating up to 90% of the human population. Pianka has stated that Mims took his statements out of context and that Pianka was explaining what would happen from biological principles alone if present human population trends continue, and that he was not in any way advocating that it happen.

Using LEDs as narrow band light sensors

Among Forrest Mims many accomplishments, he was the first person to realize that LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) had the ability to not only emit light, but also to sense light. This dual-action (emission/detection) of LEDs or “Mims Effect” was unknown before his discovery.

Forrest Mims's interest in LEDs began when he was experimenting with photosensitive devices back in 1962. In the "Backscatter" section in an online issue of The Citizen Scientist, Mims describes this himself:


While a high school senior in 1962, I first got the idea that light sensors should be able to double as light detectors. So I connected an automobile ignition coil to a cadmium sulfide photoresistor, switched on the power, and observed bright flashes of green light emitted by the semiconductor. The green flashes were distinctively different from the yellow flashes of an electrical arc.


Mims also continued his investigations into the dual use of LEDs while in college:


While studying government (my major) in college, I found that certain silicon photodiodes can emit near-infrared radiation that can be detected by similar photodiodes. I managed to send modulated tones between such photodiodes. In 1971 I demonstrated the ability of many LEDs to detect light while experimenting with an optical fiber communication system. By placing a single LED at each end of the fiber, it was possible to send signals both ways through the fiber with only a single, dual purpose semiconductor device at each end of the fiber.


Later experiments by Mims were done in 1971, when he utilized two LEDs to perform bi-directional communication. In 1980, Mims demonstrated the dual use concept of LEDs by building a bi-directional LED voice-communication circuit that allowed two people to transmit speech optically through the air and also through a 100-meter section of optical fiber. This demonstration was done at 1325 L Street in Washington D.C. – exactly the same site where Alexander Graham Bell invented lightwave communications exactly 100 years earlier! Present for the demonstration, which was sponsored by the National Geographic Society, were representatives from National Geographic, the Smithsonian Institution and Bell Labs. Bell first demonstrated his Photophone
Photophone
The photophone, also known as a radiophone, was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his then-assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's 1325 'L' Street laboratory in Washington, D.C...

 on 3 June 1880.

In addition to utilizing the dual-mode use of LEDs for communication, Mims decided to utilize the dual use of LEDs to perform measurements on specific properties of the atmosphere. In a paper published in Applied Optics (1992), entitled “Sun Photometer with light-emitting diodes as spectrally selective filters, Mims describes how LEDs can function as light detectors.

Among his many electronics books written for Radio Shack
Radio shack
Radio shack is a slang term for a room or structure for housing radio equipment.-History:In the early days of radio, equipment was experimental and home-built. The first radio transmitters used a noisy spark to generate radio waves and were often housed in a garage or shed. When radio was first...

, Mims developed several electronics kits for them. One kit in particular made use of the "Mims Effect" of LEDs, by utilizing 5 LEDs acting as narrow band light sensors to perform atmospheric analysis. Dubbed the Sun & Sky Monitoring Station, this kit - which sold 12,000 units - allowed the user to make sophisticated scientific measurements, including measuring the amount of sunlight, atmospheric haze, atmospheric water vapor, amount of PAR (Photosynthetic Radiation), and the ET (Extraterrestrial Constant). The Sun & Sky Monitoring Station is no longer carried by Radio Shack.

Mims discovery of the dual use of LEDs opened up a whole world of applications, including a commercially available instrument called MicroTOPS II which uses narrow band filters and photodiodes as detectors.

External links


Pianka controversy-related

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