Thoughts to ponder

What separates an 'amateur' from a 'professional', sheer size of funding and lab space?
Have all the 'low hanging fruit' in the world of science really been picked?
Science, innovation, and ingenuity in the home or garage helped win WWII during a time of great need for anything and everything

They came first for the chemists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a chemist.

Then they came for the electronics designers, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an electronics designer.

Then they came for the computer security experts, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a computer security expert.

And then they came for me, And by that time no one was left to speak up.

Quotes

"Amateur Science allows people to delve into the unknown, unrestricted by their school or labs and what not. That is what true science should be, entering into a mindset that is new and different."
"To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society," - Shawn Carlson
"People who want to make meth will find ways to do it that don’t require an Erlenmeyer flask. But raising a generation of people who are technically incompetent is a recipe for disaster." - Bill Nye

Chemistry

Amateur chemistry should not be confused with clandestine chemistry
Amateur chemistry is in a legal gray-area, with no laws expressly outlawing it exist (though restrictions on certain chemicals and fire safety exist), no laws (and likely little case law) exist to help legitimize it either

Notable home chemistry
- Charles Goodyear - Invented rubber vulcanization on his stove by mixing uncured rubber with sulfur powder.
- Marie Curie - Discovered radiation in her barn.
- Charles Martin Hall - Co-inventor of the Hall-Héroult process for aluminum extraction from aluminum oxide/ore, developed in a garden shed
- Louis Daguerre - Discovered the first photographic process using silver, iodine, and mercury vapor in 1873

Further reading

Rocketry

Armadillo Aerospace
- Initially amateurs interested in rocketry, formed a startup company
- http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/FAQ
- Developed a concept lunar lander independent of government funding, winning the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge level 1 and 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_Challenge)
- Currently innovating in orbital flight systems

Astronomy

Amateur astronomers helped provide worldwide skyward facing telescopes and observatories to aid NASA in tracking the Apollo 13 mission.
Amateur Astronomers
- George Alcock, discoverer of comets and novae.
- Thomas Bopp, shared the discovery of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1995 with unemployed PhD physicist Alan Hale.
- Robert Burnham, Jr., author of the Celestial Handbook.
- Andrew Ainslie Common (1841 – 1903), built his own very large reflecting telescopes and demonstrated that photography could record astronomical features invisible to the human eye.
- Robert E. Cox (1917–1989) who conducted the "Gleanings for ATMs" column in Sky and Telescope magazine for 21 years.
- John Dobson (1915), whose name is associated with the Dobsonian telescope, a simplified design for Newtonian reflecting telescopes.
- Robert Owen Evans is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and an amateur astronomer who holds the all-time record for visual discoveries of supernovae.
- Clinton B. Ford (1913–1992), who specialized in the observation of variable stars.
- Will Hay, the famous comedian and actor, who discovered a white spot on Saturn.
- Walter Scott Houston (1912–1993) who wrote the "Deep-Sky Wonders" column in Sky & Telescope magazine for almost 50 years.
- Albert G. Ingalls (1888–1958), editor of Amateur Telescope Making, Vols. 1-3 and "The Amateur Scientist". He and Russell Porter are generally credited with having initiated the amateur telescope making movement in the U. S.
- David H. Levy discovered or co-discovered 22 comets including Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, the most for any individual.
- Sir Patrick Moore, presenter of the BBC's long-running The Sky at Night and author of many books on astronomy.
- Leslie Peltier was a prolific discoverer of comets and well-known observer of variable stars.
- John M. Pierce (1886–1958) was one of the founders of the Springfield Telescope Makers. In the 1930s he published a series of 14 articles on telescope making in Hugo Gernsback's "Everyday Science and Mechanics" called "Hobbygraphs".
Russell W. Porter founded Stellafane and has been referred to as the "founder"[1][2] or one of the "founders" of amateur telescope making."[3]
- Isaac Roberts, early experimenter in astronomical photography.
- Grote Reber (1911—2002), pioneer of radio astronomy constructing the first purpose built radio telescope and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequency.

Source: wikipedia

Amateur Radio

Experimentation throughout the years expanded upon capabilities of radio broadcasts

Computer Science

Daily innovations, open source projects
Fill this section in

Amateur Projects Attracting Negative Attention

This section may need its own page

Bruce Simpson's $5000 Cruise Missile, which was conducted very openly, was aggressively shut down by the New Zealand Government by bankrupting him. See BBC and Register articles.

Any questions, feedback, advice, complaints or meanderings are welcome.
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Amateur Science

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