Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/710139
40 SMT Magazine • August 2016 When the book was published it went through printings as fast as McGraw-Hill could order them. Obviously, printed circuits were a very important issue, with a big, unsatisfied need for information to help technologists un- derstand it. Large companies were buying the books by the hundreds and giving them to their entire technical teams. Small companies were using them as cookbooks. An authorized Japanese translation was quickly published, and an unauthorized reprinting appeared in Taiwan. I started getting mail and invitations to visit facilities around the world. That was 50 years ago, and the book has maintained its position as the industry's best source of infor - mation on all things printed circuits ever since. Also, as the Industry has changed,, so has the book, with new editions bringing new devel- opments into focus and continuing to answer real questions. It's still a useful book about an important subject. Looking back, I think that the key to the success of the book, from the first edition to the seventh, is the convergence of a series of points: 1) the printed circuit is the basic building block of electronic devices, and rather than receding in importance as components have seen more and higher levels of integration, it has become even more important as an application specific interconnection system; 2) it covers the entire process; 3) each chapter contains real infor- mation on how to perform processes and how things work; 4) as the need for information has developed in many parts of a company beyond manufacturing, we have put the same level of information on design and engineering issues. Will there be an eighth edition? I can't say, but the challenges in the electronics industry haven't abated. _____________________________________ Happy Holden Editor (Chapters 1, 5, 16, 25, 26, 27, 43, 58, 65, 66) Q: What would you do differently for this Handbook (if you could do it over again)? A: There is nothing I would do differently, but I do have regrets. It is sad that we had to remove chapters and content in order to meet the publisher's size requirement and add all the new content that required a new edition. That is always a trade-off with a hardbound, published book. That's one reason I like e-books: they can be longer, in color, with hypertext connections and electronic searches. I have totaled the pages from the 1 st edition of the handbook through the 7 th . More than 1,200 pages have been removed. Most of that content was not obsolete, but used less often, or not in current practice or interest or covered in other publications that are readily available. Newcomers to our industry may never know these technologies or techniques. The handbook also focuses on practice, not theory. So you may not understand the WHY when an author talks about the best practice. My regret is that I have nearly 35 boxes in my basement full of PCB information collected over my 45 years in the industry and very little of that found its way into the handbook. There was just too much information—most of it not available on the Internet. Finally, we don't have a chapter called "Neat Stuff." I would love to have added a chapter on the neat stuff created over the last 45 years by printed circuit innovators. The AT&T/Western Electric metal-core additive of early rotary phone days; Pete Peligrino's flow-motion plating that would deposit a mil of copper in 15 minutes; plated-post technology that created microvias twenty years before laser drilling; Kollmorgen's Multiwire® and Microwire® boards; the unique properties of tin/nickel plating instead of nickel plating as a barrier metal; and landless vias! Q: Is there going to be an eighth edition? A: Well somebody will write it, and maybe I will edit it—if I'm still around. Most assur- edly, it will be an e-Book. This industry is al- ways changing. There will always be a need for a Handbook. Future Printed Circuit Handbooks will probably include printed electronics; metal inserts/wires and cavities for power dissipation; 3D laser-shaped circuitry on molded plastics, embedded components and new methods of optical wiring. THE AUTHORS OF THE PRINTED CIRCUITS HANDBOOK SPEAK