In Tribute of Electronics Australia
It's going on for almost a decade now since former magazine Electronics Australia printed their last edition of the once incredible very popular magazine. Electronics Australia started out publishing crystal sets and valve radios prior to shifting to solid state projects in the 70's. The magazine will always be remembered as; informative, honest, accurate, and basically just an "all round" interesting read. Some people may have even compared the format of the magazine remarkably similar to the UK magazine Elektor.
Many academics always had a preference for Electronics Australia over most of the other magazines, at least until a marketing expert (con man would probably describe him better) -- walked into the offices of EA and convinced them to change their format. EA's decision to change the format of the magazine with the introduction of many advertisements in exchange for less projects sent them bankrupt, people stopped purchasing the magazine, they wanted projects and not advertisements on technology.
Interestingly, Silicon Chip publications purchased the full copyrights to EA's material shortly after they declared bankruptcy. This includes their website and ownership to all of the projects. There would be thousands of them. A lot of people were left unemployed. Silicon Chip's readership literally sky rocketed. They no longer had a competitor. Another interesting point is that SC owner and publisher Leo Simpson was a former employee of EA during the 70's and early to mid 80's.
My heart goes out to all the staff at EA, the magazine will always be remembered as being more like a text book written by a rocket scientist than a sales letter written by a businessman.
Trent Jackson
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