Original Typewritten, Bugbook PDF Downloads
If there is any silver lining that has resulted from what I call, “the Bug Book History” mess, it is the availability of complete PDF downloads of typewritten Bugbooks 0, I, II, IIA, III, V, VI, plus one other manuscript at this website.
The availability of the typewritten book downloads does not mean that I am placing these books in the public domain. On the contrary, I still assert my legally-won, exclusive, copyright ownership to all of these books. You will observe a watermark such as,
Unit Number 19 of Bugbook VI: Copyright © 2009 Peter Rony. All rights reserved.
at the bottom of each page of each original Bugbook. This copyright notice gives the copyright date and owner, the copyright symbol © , and the statement, All rights reserved. To minimize both file size and downloading time, each Unit of each Bugbook is a separate downloadable file.
Why am I making available downloads of my original Bugbooks? First, because I own the copyrights to all my books, whether typewritten or typeset. Second, because the original typewritten versions are interesting, in my opinion, from a historical point of view. Other reasons are listed as follows:
1. The original Bugbooks I/II/IIA, III, and V/VI are 35, 34, and 32 years old, having been copyrighted in 1974, 1975, and 1977, respectively.
2. 34 years is equivalent to two or three generations of computer-technology changes. The changes in computer technology between 1975 and 2009 have been breathtaking and revolutionary.
3. The need to learn how to wire 7400-series, integrated-circuit chips (ICs) has disappeared.
4. The need to learn how to interface an 8080A or Z80 microprocessor chip has disappeared.
5. The need to learn how a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) chip has disappeared. Also, the need to learn how serial communication works has disappeared because USB has taken over.
6. No harm is done to any book publisher by making the typewritten versions of the Bugbooks available for downloading as PDF files.
7. Original Bugbooks I, II, IIA, III, V, and VI can still be “dry labbed” even if you do not have a digital breadboarding station, the MD-1 microcomputer trainer, or the MMD-1 microcomputer trainer, all of which may be collector’s items. [NOTE: To dry lab is to mentally conduct a step-by-step experiment, as opposed to using laboratory equipment to observe what happens.] The original Bugbooks were intended to be used with laboratory equipment. In the absence of such equipment, you can read each step-by-step experiment and imagine what would occur. Thus, the original Bugbooks are still valid as educational texts even in 2009.
8. The step-by-step Bugbook experiments captured my learning experiences during the mid-1970s and have proven that hundreds of thousand readers could – and still can – re-experience what and how I learned. This is especially true with Bugbook III. Only about 1500 MD-1 trainers were sold by E&L Instruments, Inc., but 100,000 or more copies of Bugbook III were sold in both its typewritten and typeset versions. Radio Shack sold about 45,000 of its private-label version of Bugbook III.
9. The PDF version of Bugbooks I, II, IIA, III, V, and VI help prove my contention that I personally wrote all of these laboratory textbooks (with the exception of Unit 8 in Bugbook III, a unit that Jonathan Titus wrote).
10. The original, typewritten Bugbooks demonstrate the huge change that has occurred in manuscript writing between 1974 and 2009. The Bugbook pages were created using an IBM Selectric typewriter and several Selectric balls (e.g., Italic, Times Roman, and Orator), plus Snopake liquid.
11. The original, typewritten Bugbooks demonstrate the hundreds of hours that I invested during the Bugbook Era (February 1974 to March 12, 1979) in creating the very successful Bugbook series. When I withdrew from Nanotran Inc and Tychon Inc on June 17, 1980, the Bugbook Era came to an end.
12. The “Experiments in Digital Electronics” workbook, which I wrote in February 1974 and is now available as a PDF download, provides evidence of a pre-Bugbook I and II manuscript that was exclusively used by fifteen chemical-engineering CO-OP students during the spring 1974 quarter at Virginia Tech. I call this workbook "Bugbook 0", although students of history should understand that the concept of "0" did not exist in Roman times. The workbook, and the course, were very successful.