Editing Popular Electronics (section)

==How it started==
[[File:Popular Electronics Oct 1954.jpg|thumb|right|The cover of the premiere issue of ''Popular Electronics'' magazine]]
''[[Radio News|Radio & Television News]]'' was a magazine for professionals and the editors wanted to create a magazine for hobbyists. Ziff-Davis had started ''Popular Aviation'' in 1927 and ''Popular Photography'' in 1934 but found that Gernsback Publications had the trademark on Popular Electronics. It was used in ''[[Radio-Craft]]''<ref>{{cite journal | author = Raymond F. Yates |date=February 1943 | title = Popular Electronics, Part 1 | journal = Radio-Craft | volume = 14 | issue = 5 | pages =266–68, 316–17 }}</ref> from 1943 until 1948. Ziff-Davis bought the trademark and started ''Popular Electronics'' with the October 1954 issue.

Many of the editors and authors worked for both Ziff-Davis magazines. Initially Oliver Read was the editor of both ''Radio & Television News'' and ''Popular Electronics''. Read was promoted to Publisher in June 1956.<ref name="NYTimes Jun 12 1956">{{cite news|date=June 12, 1956|title=News of Advertising and Marketing|page=54|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1956/06/12/archives/news-of-advertising-and-marketing-socks-ad-post-elects-accounts.html}}</ref> Oliver Perry Ferrell took over as editor of ''Popular Electronics'' and William A. Stocklin became editor of ''Radio & Television News''. In ''Radio & TV News ''John T. Frye wrote a column on a fictional repair shop where the proprietor, Mac, would interact with other technicians and customers. The reader would learn repair techniques for servicing radios and TVs. In ''Popular Electronics'' his column was about two high school boys, Carl and Jerry. Each month the boys would have an adventure that would teach the reader about electronics.

By 1954 building audio and radio kits was a growing pastime. [[Heathkit]] and many others offered kits that included all of the parts with detailed instructions. The premier cover shows the assembly of a Heathkit A-7B audio amplifier. ''Popular Electronics'' would offer projects that were built from scratch; that is, the individual parts were purchased at a local electronics store or by mail order. The early issues often showed these as father and son projects.

Most of the early projects used [[vacuum tube]]s, as [[transistor]]s (which had just become available to hobbyists) were expensive: the small-signal Raytheon [[CK722]] transistor was [[United States dollar|US$]]3.50 in the December 1954 issue, while a typical small-signal vacuum tube (the [[12AX7]]) was $0.61. Lou Garner wrote the feature story for the first issue, a battery-powered tube radio that could be used on a bicycle. Later he was given a column called Transistor Topics (June 1956). Transistors soon cost less than a dollar and transistor projects became common in every issue of ''Popular Electronics''. The column was renamed to Solid State in 1965 and ran under his byline until December 1978.