Book excerpt: Passive components and discrete devices form the bedrocks on which all modern electronic circuits are built. This Pocket Book is a single volume applications guide to the most popular and useful of these devices, containing 670 diagrams, tables and carefully selected practical circuits. Throughout the Pocket Book great emphasis is placed on practical user information and circuitry. All of the active devices used are modestly priced and readily available.The book is split into twenty chapters. The first three explain important practical features of the ranges of modern passive electrical components, including relays, meters, motors, sensors and transducers. Chapters 4 to 6 deal with the design ofpractical attenuators, filters, and 'bridge' circuits. The remaining fourteen chapters deal with specific types of discrete semiconductor device, including various types of diode, transistors, JFETs, MOSFETs, VMOS devices, UJTs, SCRs, TRIACs, and various optoelectronic devices. This easy-to-read, concise, highly practical and largely non-mathematical volume is aimed directly at engineers, technicians, students and competent experimenters who can build a design directly from a circuit diagram, and if necessary modify it to suit individual needs. Ray Marston is the author of the multi-volume series of Newnes Circuits Manuals. His magazine articles on circuit design appear regularly in a wide range of publications worldwide.