The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) built a craft for NASA that’s been in space for a decade and passed Pluto last year. And remember the little “pill” that Senator and former astronaut John Glenn swallowed before he went into space the second time? That was mostly developed by APL. A few months ago, Fast Company named APL one of 10 most innovative companies in the world, mentioning the prosthetics program that developed a thought-controlled arm.
APL’s Technical Digest, which started in 1961, documents APL’s remarkable contributions to science and technology. Until recently, only about 20 years of the Digest were online. Now there are PDF’s of all of the articles from the very first issue, dated September-October 1961, through 1977 (volume 16). This means that all of the Digest’s issues, from volume 1(1) until the present, are available online to everyone.
On the Digest’s home page, there is a link to “Online Issues” and a link to “Other Back Issues.”
The link to “Online Issues” gives PDF’s of articles from October-December 1995 (vol. 16, issue 4) to the present.
The link to “Other Back Issues” gives PDF’s of articles from
- 1961, vol. 1(1) – 1977, vol. 16(4) (as the APL Technical Digest)
- [there were no issues published during 1979 and 1980]
- 1980, vol. 1(1) – 1995, vol. 16(3) (as the Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest)
You can search the full text of the articles at “Online Issues” (October-December, 1995) simultaneously, using the search box on the journal’s home page. Here are tips for searching, which definitely help. The older articles, from 1961 through 1995 (scroll down), cannot be searched.
Dr. Harry Charles is the current editor-in-chief of the Digest. He is the Group Supervisor and Program Manager of the APL Education Center, as well as the Chair of the Applied Physics program in the Whiting School’s Engineering for Professionals (EPP) program. He and the rest of the editorial staff are looking forward to some special issues of the Digest in 2017, to commemorate the Laboratory’s 75th anniversary.