Knowledge and Nostalgia: 2025’s Top Educational Articles

Happy New Year! As we make the transition to 2026, let's take one final moment to reflect on the lessons of 2025—and by "lessons," of course, I mean "educational content." This is a broad category, encompassing historical pieces as well as technical articles, industry articles, and projects. Below, I've collected the most-read article of each type published in 2025.

Technical Articles

We'll start with the technical article category, a choice that will surprise absolutely no one who knows me. The identity of the year's most popular technical article did surprise me, at least a little. I was expecting it to be an introductory article, but instead "Four Interesting AM Modulation Circuits You Should Know About" lived up to its name.

One method of implementing a double-balanced ring modulator. Image used courtesy of Steve Arar

This article was written by Dr. Steve Arar and appears exactly midway through his series on AM modulation.

Projects

The year's top project article, "Craft Your Own Hardware Soundboard Using an Arduino Microcontroller" by Kristijan Nelkovski, was also one of my Editor's Picks for 2025. I enjoyed editing it, so I'm glad to see that so many people enjoyed reading it.

Kristijan's custom soundboard, complete with stylish All About Circuits-themed case. Image used courtesy of Kristijan Nelkovski

Note that this article is actually the first half of a two-part project. It continues in "Programming Your Standalone Hardware Soundboard."

Industry Articles

All About Circuits receives a wide variety of contributed articles from companies. 2025's most-viewed industry article, "A New Ratiometric Data Acquisition Circuit for Unequal Supply and Reference Voltages," came to us from Texas Instruments and most closely resembles an application note. I know I found it educational!

Schematic of a proposed new data acquisition system. Image used courtesy of Texas Instruments

Historical Profiles

Of the 20+ historical engineer profiles we published in 2025, "Richard Hamming: The 'Computer Janitor' of the Manhattan Project" proved to be the most popular. You could say that it really cleaned up. It certainly didn't bomb.

Richard Hamming in 1988. Image used courtesy of ACM

This article was written by Luke James, who is also responsible for the excellent Retro Register series. Which brings us to our final category…

Retro Register

Last but not least, these component histories speak to the nostalgia of this article's title. At the same time, they also impart plenty of knowledge.

Each Retro Register article showcases a different component. Image used courtesy of All About Circuits

The Retro Register debuted in late August with "The MOS 6502: How a $25 Chip Sparked a Computer Revolution." Since then, articles in this series have proven consistently popular. Possibly due to its head start, the first installment has yet to be surpassed for number of views.

Let Us Hear From You

What were your favorite educational articles of the year? What would you like to see in 2026? Let us know in the comments!

Featured image (modified) used courtesy of Adobe Stock