preface to the 3rd edition

I ordered the “first volume” from Binom. The book should arrive soon. I will study it carefully, and the results will be a review. I hope the book lives up to my expectations. It’s even interesting to compare your translation skills with professionals. In the meantime, I suggest you start reading the preface.

Moore's Law is still proving its validity. It still stands strong from the publication of the second edition a quarter of a century later. In this new, third (AND FINAL) edition, we have tried to respond with significant improvements to the dramatic changes in the field of electronics.

• Emphasis is placed on devices and circuits for analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion (Chapter 13), since embedded microcontrollers are now ubiquitous.

• Demonstrated specialized peripheral ICs for collaboration with microcontrollers (Chapter 15).

• A detailed discussion of the problem of choosing among existing logical families of ICs, as well as the problem of interaction of logical signals with the real world around them, is implemented (Chapters 10 and 12).

• A significant amount of material has been added on a number of important topics related to the design of the analog part of devices:

̶ design of high-precision circuits (Chapter 5);

̶ designing low noise circuits (Chapter 8);

̶ design of switching power supplies (Chapters 3, 9 and 12);

̶ transformation in power supply circuits (Chapter 9).

We've also added lots of exciting new themes, including:

• digital audio and video (including cable and satellite television);

• signal transmission lines;

• circuit modeling in SPICE language;

• transimpedance amplifiers;

• MOS FET with induced channel;

• MOSFET with built-in protection;

• powerful keys;

• properties of quartz crystals and generators;

• complete study of the PT at the pn junction;

• high-voltage stabilizers;

• optoelectronics;

• powerful logical registers;

• delta-sigma converters;

• high-precision conversion with multiple slope values;

• technologies for manufacturing storage devices;

• serial digital buses;

• illustrative examples of professional design.

In this new edition we have taken into account changes in the field of electronics that have occurred since previous editions were published. Despite the fact that “The Art of Circuit Design” (published for 35 years) is based on handwritten teaching materials for a university course, the book has gained great popularity in the engineering community. Therefore, we continued to use the “this is how we do it” concept in circuit design. We have increased the depth of presentation of the material, while (we hope) maintaining the accessibility and ease of interpretation of the basics of electronics. At the same time, we have separated some of the methodological and laboratory materials for the course into a separate book “Comprehension of the “Art of Circuit Design”“: A Practical Guide” (Learning the Art of Electronics), as an important addition. It is similar to the bookThe Art of Circuit Design: A Student's Guide“(Student Manual for The Art of Electronics), published in conjunction with the previous edition.

We worked diligently for 20 years preparing this publication for publication. It includes important design information: approximately 350 diagrams, 50 photographs and 87 tables (covering more than 1,900 active circuit components). The tables allow you to select components based on key characteristics (both measured and declared).

Because the scope and depth of presentation have increased significantly, we have decided not to include a number of topics that were covered in the second edition.²

This is despite the fact that the new book has large format pages, a more compact font and many of the drawings fit into one column.

Some of the additional material that we had originally hoped to include in this volume (real-world component properties; advanced topics on bipolar transistors, field-effect transistors, op-amps, and power regulation) will instead be later published as a separate companion book, The Art of Circuit Design: collection of x-chapters” [«икс-глав», примечание от переводчика] (The Art of Electronics: The x-Chapters). Links to additional x-chapters and pictures from them are in italics in this book.

The site has been updated artofelectronics.com, on which, starting from previous editions, collections of “Useful circuits” (“Circuit ideas”) and “Harmful circuits” (“Bad circuits”) have been accumulating. We hope that over time the site will become a community for lively discussion about electronics.

We are happy to welcome your comments and suggestions (as well as just letters from loyal fans) at the following email addresses: horowitz@physics.harvard.edu And hill@rowland.harvard.edu.

We express our gratitude

Where do we begin to thank our invaluable colleagues? Of course, at the top of the list is David Tranah, our tireless editor from our hometown Cambridge University Press. Our support, an indispensable assistant with the LATEXpert program, a wise advisor on all publishing issues and even (would you believe it) a typist! He compiled 1,905 pages of marked-up text by modifying the original LATEX files with adjustments from various authors. He contributed several thousand index entries and made it all interact with more than 1,500 associated figures and tables. He had to put up with a couple of finicky authors. We are entirely in David's debt. We've got a glass of beer!

Thanks to electronics designer exceptional, Jim Macarthur! He carefully read the draft chapters of the book and made significant rational suggestions. We have applied all of them. Our colleague Peter Lu taught us the ins and outs of Adobe Illustrator and came to our rescue when we complained that we were stuck. The drawings in the book provide qualitative evidence of his leadership. And our tireless colleague, Jason Gallicchio, with his mastery of Mathematica, contributed to the visual revelation of the properties of delta-sigma transform, nonlinear control, and filter functions. He also left his mark on the microcontroller chapter by sharing his knowledge and code.

We are grateful for the invaluable contributions of Bob Adams, Mike Burns, Steve Cerwin, Jesse Coleman, Michael Covington, Doug Doskosil, Jon Hagen ( Jon Hagen), Tom Hayes, Phil Hobbs, Peter Horowitz, George Kontopidis, Maggie McFee, Curtis Mead, Ali Mehmed Mehmed), Angel Peterchev, Jim Phillips, Marco Sartore, Andrew Speck, Jim Thompson, Jim van Zee, Gu Yun Wei (Gu Yeon Wei), John Willison, Jonathan Wolff, John Woodgate and Woody Yang. We also express our gratitude to all those (we are sure of this) who were not mentioned here and apologize for this. Authors of additional materials (circuits, amazing applications, unusual measurements, etc., such as Uwe Beis [Uwe Beis]Tom Bruns [Tom Bruhns] and John Larkin [John Larkin]) are mentioned in appropriate places in the book.

Simon Capelin kept us from getting discouraged with his constant participation and didn't nag us about missing deadlines.

We would like to thank the people involved in the actual production of the book. Our project director, Peggy Rote, literary editor, Vicki Donaghy, and a team of unknown artists who turned our handwritten diagrams into quality images.

We remember fondly our late colleague and friend, Jim Williams. His professionally knowledgeable accounts of circuit shortcomings and advantages, as well as his no-compromise approaches to high-precision circuit design, will be sorely missed. The specifics of his worldview are an example for all of us.

Finally, we are greatly indebted to our loving, caring and patient wives, Vida and Ava. They didn't get the attention they deserved for decades while we were obsessed with this book.

A little about the tools

All tables were created using Excel from Microsoft. All graphs are drawn in the Igor Pro program. Then the tables and graphs were processed in Adobe Illustrator with the addition of text explanations in the Gothic font “Helvetica Neue LT”. Oscilloscope screenshots were taken on our reliable Tektronix compact packaged instruments, the TDS3044 and TDS3054. These images were pre-processed in Adobe Photoshop, with final processing in Adobe Illustrator. All photographs in the book were taken mainly with two cameras:

• camera for landscape photography “Calumet Horseman” 6 × 9 cm with a lens “Schneider Symmar”, with a focal length of 105 mm and aperture f/5.6, on “Kodak Plus-X 120” film (using “Microdol-X” developer in the ratio 1:3 at a temperature of 75° Fahrenheit, and for digitization – a multi-format scanner from Mamiya);

• a Canon 5D camera with a lens equipped with an oblique optical axis adjustment using the Scheimpflug principle¹ 1 What is this principle? You can Google it! and having a focal length of 90 mm.

We compiled the book's “manuscript” in LATEX using the PCTEX program from Personal TeX, Incorporated. The text is typed in Times New Roman and Helvetica fonts. The latter began in 1931² 2 This was a response to an article in the London newspaper The Times condemning outdated fonts. and was later finalized by Max Miedinger in 1957.

Paul Horowitz

Winfield Hill

January 2015

city ​​of Cambridge, Massachusetts

Translator's Column

According to good tradition, Gulya Bibarsova is proclaimed the muse of this article, for her healthy spirit of adventure and success in the field of mountaineering.