INTRODUCTION
When learning about electronics in the past, you started with basics of physics and math, and then went on to learn electrical theories. Next came instruction in how electronic components work, and then you combined them into circuits. Then you put the circuits together into specific pieces of equipment. Finally, at last, knowing the equipment, you could understand the application, such as TV or computers or audio or home system control or whatever. This approach to learning is called the bottom-up approach. You learned the details and added them all together to get to what you really wanted to know about—the application and its technology.
That is still the way you learn electronics in college today, and it is the approach taken by most other electronics books you may have seen. This book doesn’t take that old legacy path. Instead it skips most of the early background and theory, goes right for details on the circuits, and then builds to the applications. It is a much more interesting way to learn electronics. And it is also far more relevant to how electronic equipment is implemented today. We call this way of learning the “systems view” of electronics.