[ATM] Is ATMing really disappearing?

[Dominic-Luc Webb <dlwebb@canit.se>]

I know people are often discussing this hobby as being on the
decline, but I wonder if there is quantitative evidence for this?

Several of the books we often refer to are now available in
libraries in my area (Stockholm/Uppsala, Sweden) and they are
more difficult to loan because they are already on loan to
others. Indeed, I checked and these books are being borrowed
more frequently. Sadly, the Kingslake book we recently have
been discussing regarding Schmidt optics, has been stolen from
a couple of libraries around the country. It seems ATMing is
popular enough these days to warrant stealing related books,
certainly for some subset of ATMers. To get it myself, I may
well end up buying it on Ebay from the very people who stole
it. I suspecy there may be an expanding black market for ATM
related items, which implies the hobby is increasing.

Some years back, this list had grown to around 13,000 members. Has
membership here declined since then? I could imagine that it might
have grown fast at first, and then levelled off once most of the
ATMs out there learned about it. Has it actually gone down?

Are attendences at workshops down? I saw considerably more people
at the Chabot workshop a couple years ago than when I was 8 years
old (I am now in my 40's). There were several kids there who must
have been around 8-10 years old.

I could envision sales of Pyrex blanks having gone down, but mainly
because many people have gone to plate glass. How many people have
plate glass blanks would be difficult to quantify since anyone can
make one without going to an ATM supplier. But we still mainly use
SiC, and I wonder if the companies that sell SiC have had reduced
sales?

Here in Sweden, there is a space science center. The last I heard,
it had attracted a huge number of students and was hugely successful.
I am guessing that maybe jobs in astronomy might be getting more
diverse and so some subdivisions have gotten smaller in favor of
trendier areas, like astrobiology. Maybe someone in the field could
answer this?

Dominic-Luc Webb



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