The Maker's Manual

Chapter 16. Arduino

Once upon a time, you could be considered an electrical wizard simply by creating a pushbutton electric doorbell for your house. As the field of electronics grew more complicated, hobby electronics also grew complicated. Soon hobbyists were making their own tube radios, then transistor radios, then their own televisions. In 1975, the field reached a peak of complexity, when hobbyists could even build their own desktop computer, the Altair. But that high point also marked the beginning of a serious dropoff in home hobby electronics. You didn’t need to know much electrical theory to wire up a doorbell, but building a computer required specialized knowledge in mathematics and physics. This was a high barrier that beginners had ...