Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Forrest Mimms On Modern Air Travel With a Bag Full of Electronics

Posted by timothy on from the only-choked-out-once dept.

Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics; he writes at Make about his experiences, both before and after 2001. A relevant slice: After police were called when I was going through security at the San Antonio International Airport and after major problems going through security in Kona, Hawaii, I finally realized the obvious: Most people who don’t make things have no idea how to evaluate homemade equipment. Some are terrified by exposed wires and circuit boards, maybe because of bomb scenes in movies. So I gave up. Now my carryon bag is only half stuffed with electronics; the rest is shipped ahead via FedEx.

3 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. To be fair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To be fair, I'm a nerd whose been reading Slashdot since 2000, and I have no idea who Forrest Mimms is either.

    1. Re:To be fair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Forrest Mimms is the man who wrote the book that got me started in electronics. Getting Started In Electronics. The greatest beginner electronic book EVER!(In my not so humble opinion.) He also wrote the Engineers Mini Notebooks that sold in radio shack to teach us about opamps and 555 timers and all the other things we needed to learn before ardweenies hit the world.

  2. Re:He caused his own inconvenience by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's kind of strange is that up until the early 1970s there wasn't *any* security for air travel. At all. Some of the shuttle flights didn't even require you to buy a ticket in advance, they sold them on the plane.

    Even after the first few hijackings, the airlines were stridently opposed to security screening, thinking it would turn off customers and make the airport experience a nightmare. They would have rather just paid the fucking ransoms and moved on.

    I can remember in the late 1970s we used to ride our bikes to MSP and walk the gates. I'm sure we must have had to have gone through metal detectors, but they clearly didn't give a shit about a couple of 13 year old boys walking to the gates.

    It's kind of hard to fathom why air security got so extreme relative to how lax it had been and how much the airlines resisted increasing it, even when their planes were pretty regularly getting hijacked.

    (For great background, read "The Skies Belong to Us" -- a great review of both skyjackings generally and the Western Flight 701 hijacking to Algeria in particular).