Gordon McComb - Robot Builder’s Bonanza

Copyright 2019 by Gordon McComb. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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For Aria Lynn McCombyour turn

Gordon McComb has written about amateur and educational robot building for 30 years and is called the godfather of hobby robotics by Make Magazine. He is the author of all four previous editions of Robot Builders Bonanza, which are among the most widely read books on hobby robotics.

T his is the fifth edition in the very popular Robot Builders Bonanza series. Its all new: new projects, new ideas, new experiments. Im happy to say Ive been involved, in one way or another, with the writing and developing of all five editions in this series. My home is full of robots and robot parts!

Gordon McComb began tinkering at an early age. His sisters had to hide the screwdrivers to avoid having everything in the house disassembled. Its no surprise that for 40 years, Gordon has been writing about gadgets: taking apart gadgets, inventing new gadgets, building your own gadgets. In 1987, the first edition of Robot Builders Bonanza launched a huge interest in the best gadgets of all: robots! The field of hobby robots, robots you could actually build and control in your own garage or on your own dining room table, was born.

I met Gordon in August of 1975, at a party neither of us planned to attend. We were both aspiring writers, and we talked for hours. It was so exciting to be with someone who was nearly exploding with ideas! My dad said, Thats a young man trying to drive a troika, a very difficult cart to manage, pulled by three horses! Gordon had so many interests, going in so many directions. I saw right away that he could do anything he wanted to dowith a little organization. Not long after, I became his cheerleader, his 100% supporter, his wife, his best friend.

Gordon died on September 10, 2018, shortly after writing this book. It was very sudden, very unexpected; my own state of shock has been mirrored in the robotics and electronics communities. Many people have written to me to say Gordons books are the reason they chose a career in electronics, or robotics. He had, and will continue to have, an enormous effect on his readers.

He wrote over 70 books and hundreds of articles, mostly on robotics, electronics, and technology. What is so special about Gordons writing is his style. He is comfortable to read. He is personal. He is conversational. He is very, very good at explaining technical information to those of us who are maybe just a bit techno-challenged. There is so much of Gordons personality in his writing, we can know him. When we read him, we can hear his voice. We can continue to enjoy his wit, his creativity, his enthusiasm. E. B. White, one of our favorite writers, suggested that books are people, people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book. Oh, I sincerely hope so.

Because of Gordons unexpected death, I have had to take on some of the jobs usually finished by the author between writing a book and its publication. For the fifth edition of Robot Builders Bonanza