This book is an attempt to provide a systematic and accessible presentation of the practical lore of electro-optical instrument design and construction: in other words, it's the book I needed as a graduate student, but couldn't find.
It's intended in the first instance for use by oppressed graduate students in physics and electrical engineering, who have to get their apparatus working long enough to take some data before they can graduate. When they do, they’ll find that real-world design work has much the same harassed and overextended flavor, so in the second instance, it’s intended as a self-teaching guide and professional reference for working electro-optical designers.
For the third edition (February 2022), the book has been fully revised, and is almost a third again the size of the second edition, besides bringing in things learned in twelve years of consulting with EOI. The large format also made it possible to include a revised and expanded version of the thermal control chapter, which makes the printed book complete.
Now a new laboratory bible for optics researchers has joined the list; it is Phil Hobbs' Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work, aimed at providing "accessible presentation of the practical lore of electro-optical instrument design and construction." I predict it will move to the front of the shelf. This is a wonderfully practical book.... [It] is also a wonderfully entertaining read....
I like this guy's attitude. He points out how most scholars...never write about the troubles they had getting the apparatus to work right, or the changes they had to make to get valid data. Mr. Hobbs talks about exactly that. Good man. ...[I]f you work in this field, you ought to buy this book. If you don't work in this field, then you should still read it.
Officially: Wiley.com
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