Open Circuits Open Circuits Book Gallery Outtakes

Open Circuits

The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components

Available now from No Starch Press

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Open Circuits

The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components

by Windell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer

Open Circuits is a photographic exploration of the beautiful design inside everyday electronics. Its stunning cross-section photography unlocks a hidden world full of elegance, subtle complexity, and wonder.

No Starch Press, September 2022, 304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781718502345
Available in Hardcover and eBook versions.

Available now to order from

Sample chapter and full table of contents available to download at No Starch Press.

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Gallery: Images from the book

A 3.5 mm headphone plug in cross section
3.5 mm headphone plug and jack in cross section
A barrel plug from a power supply
The barrel plug in its jack, in cross section.
A thick-film LED numeric display with its decoder chip visible
An 5x7 LED matrix display with rows and columns
An alphanumeric display on a hybrid ceramic circuit
The bubble display from a Hewlett-Packard 67 calculator
The optical sensor from a old Microsoft mouse
A vintage chip in a rare clear dual-inline package
A color sensor IC with a grid of color filters
A red green bicolor LED in cross section
A simple two-layer circuit board
A 4-layer circuit board, showing how layers are connected together
A DIMM memory module with a 6-layer circuit board
The 10-layer circuit board from a smartphone
LMR-195 coaxial cable, an high quality cable for RF signals
The flexible power cable from a Apple MacBook Pro computer
Category 6 (Cat6) Ethernet Cable with four twisted pairs of wires
An HDMI cable, with four independently shielded twisted pairs
Toggle switches on the front panel of an instrument
Cross section through a toggle switch
Tactile push button switches on a circuit board
Cross section through a tactile switch.
The quarter-inch phono plug from a guitar cable in cross section
A cross section through a small audio speaker
A 12AX7 vacuum tube on a vintage Fender guitar amplifier
Cross section through the 12AX7 vacuum tube
Close up on a core memory plane
Vintage integrated circuits in TO-99 metal can packages
EPROM (Erasable programmable read-only memory) on a circuit board
The underside of a modern chip in a ball grid array package
A vintage glass-encapsulated precision film resistor
A neon lamp, as one might find in an illuminated power switch
A germanium 'cat whisker' diode, as one might find in a crystal radio
The tuning-fork quartz crystal from a wristwatch
A multilayer ceramic capacitor on a circuit board
A 2N2222 transistor in a metal can package
The magnetic head from a classic cassette tape recorder
A small power supply transformer, with different windings of wire visible

Gallery: Outtake Images

Cutting open a stepper motor with an angle grinder. (Outtake)
Cross section through a rocker DIP switch. (Outtake)
Silver mica capacitor in cross section. (Outtake)
Vintage circuit board with resistors and transistors (Outtake)
Inside a vintage transistor radio (Outtake)
Inside an IBM SLT module (Outtake)
Side view of a NIXIE tube without its cover (Outtake)
Cross section through a bridge rectifier (Outtake)
A vintage photoresistor in a gold-plated can (Outtake)
32 kHz crystal on the Timex watch circuit board (Outtake)
Close up on the CMOS image sensor (Outtake)
Cross section through a tubular ceramic capacitor (Outtake)
DIL thick film resistor array, with epoxy removed (Outtake)
Detail near rotary switch in Tektronix oscilloscope (Outtake)
Trimmer pot on an oscilloscope circuit board (Outtake)
Stator coils from a stepper motor (Outtake)
Electron gun of a tiny cathode ray tube (Outtake)
Cross section through a ceramic resonator (Outtake)
SOT-23-5 IC on a circuit board. (Outtake)
Stator coils from a brushless optical drive motor (Outtake)
Inside a flickering green LED (Outtake)
Second view inside a flickering green LED (Outtake)
Credit card EMV chip showing the tamper-resistant IC (Outtake)
Ethernet cable and jack with integrated magnetics (Outtake)
Miniature CRT displays image of core memory (Outtake)
Close up on a precision optical encoder wheel (Outtake)
Cutting into an electromagnetic relay with a diamond saw (Outtake)
Superspeed USB cable: Cross-section in resin (Outtake)
Photography setup: Smartphone for the rear cover. (Outtake)
Cross section through a multilayer ceramic capacitor (Outtake)
Cross section through a power diode (Outtake)
Parallel cuts while sectioning a film capacitor (Outtake)
Ceramic DIP IC with the cover removed (Outtake)
A color sensor IC in a leadless package (Outtake)
Color sensor IC on LEGO brick for scale (Outtake)
Close up on LED filament, showing the blue glow (Outtake)
Tactile buttons on a circuit board (Outtake)
Cross section through a FireWire jack (Outtake)
Cross section through a FireWire plug (Outtake)
Vintage wirewound heater coil with package (Outtake)
Close-up view of a semiconductor wafer (Outtake)
32 kHz crystal on wristwatch circuit board (Outtake)
Three-pin component with strangely flexed legs (Outtake)