.
A
magazine of
popular science and technology, it now features automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do-it-yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation and transportation of all types, space, tools and gadgets are commonly featured.
Practical Mechanics (1933) was a monthly British magazine devoted mostly to home mechanics and technology. It was first published by
George Newnes, Ltd., in October
1933, and ran for 352 issues until the magazine's termination in August 1963. Practical Mechanics was edited by
Frederick J. Camm until his death in 1959.
With an emphasis on things its readers could reasonably construct themselves, the magazine featured numerous articles on how to build things around one's house, such as a sink or bathtub. It also regularly featured more fanciful articles on how to build things with less obvious applications around the home, for example a
Geiger counter, or an aeroplane for £25 (not including the cost of an engine).
Practical Mechanics was one of a number of
DIY British publications, including
Practical Householder (
1955?),
Practical Motorist (1934), and
Practical Wireless (1932), also founded by Frederick J. Camm.
Popular Science
Popular Science (1872) (PopSci) began in 1872. An American quarterly
popular science magazine, its articles now cater to the general reader on science and technology subjects. Early issues were mostly reprints of English periodicals. The journal became an outlet for scholarly writings and ideas of
Charles Darwin,
Thomas Henry Huxley,
Louis Pasteur,
Henry Ward Beecher,
Charles Sanders Peirce,
William James,
Thomas Edison,
John Dewey and
James McKeen Cattell.
William Jay Youmans, Edward's brother, helped found
Popular Science Monthly in 1872 and was an editor as well.
By
1915 the readership was declining and publishing a science journal was a financial challenge. In a September 1915 editorial, Cattell related these difficulties to his readers and announced that the
Popular Science Monthly name had been "transferred" to a group that wanted the name for a
general audience magazine, a publication which fit the name better. The
existing journal would
continue the academic tradition as
Scientific Monthly. Existing subscribers would remain subscribed under the new name. Scientific Monthly was published until
1958 when it was
absorbed into Science.
The
Modern Publishing Company acquired the Popular Science Monthly name. This company had purchased
Electrician and Mechanic magazine in 1914 and over the next two years
merged several magazines together into a science magazine for a general audience. The magazine had a series of name changes:
Modern Electrics and Mechanics,
Popular Electricity and Modern Mechanics,
Modern Mechanics and finally
World's Advance, before the publishers purchased the name Popular Science Monthly. The
October 1915 issue was titled P
opular Science Monthly and World's Advance. The volume number (Vol. 87, No. 4) was that of Popular Science but the content was that of World's Advance. The new editor was
Waldemar Kaempffert, a former editor of
Scientific American.
The change in
Popular Science Monthly was dramatic. The old version was a scholarly journal that had eight to ten articles in a 100-page issue. There would be ten to twenty photographs or illustrations. The
new version had hundreds of
short, easy to read articles with
hundreds of illustrations. Editor Kaempffert was writing for "the
home craftsman and hobbyist who wanted to know something about the world of science." The
circulation doubled in the first year.
From the
mid-1930s to the 1960s, the magazine featured fictional stories of Gus Wilson's Model Garage, centered on car problems.
An
annual review of changes to the
new model year cars ran in
1940 and '41, but [thanks to WW2] did not return after the war until
1954.
From
1935 to 1949, the magazine sponsored a
series of short films, produced by
Jerry Fairbanks and released by
Paramount Pictures.
Scientific American (1845) (SciAm, SA) was founded by inventor and publisher
Rufus M. Porter in
1845 as a four-page weekly newspaper, turning monthly in
1921.
Throughout its early years, much emphasis was placed on reports of what was going on at the
U.S. Patent Office. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including
perpetual motion machines, an 1860 device for buoying vessels by
Abraham Lincoln, and the
universal joint which now can be found in nearly every automobile manufactured. As a
popular science magazine, many famous scientists, including
Albert Einstein, have contributed articles to it.
Until 1948, it remained owned by Munn & Company. Under Munn's grandson, Orson Desaix Munn III, it had evolved into something of a "workbench" publication, similar to the twentieth-century incarnation of
Popular Science. In the years after WW2, the magazine fell into
decline. In 1948, three partners who were planning on starting a new popular science magazine, to be called
The Sciences, purchased the assets of the
old Scientific American instead and put its name on the designs they had created for their new magazine.
USA
Electrical Experimenter May, 1913 - August 1931 ⇨
Science and Invention magazine - August '20 to August '31 .
Science and Invention was originally called
The Electrical Experimenter and published by the Experimenter Publishing Company from
May 1913 to August 1929; the
title changed from The Electrical Experimenter to
Science and Invention in
August 1920. It was published and edited by Hugo Gernsback, an electrical engineer who started publishing and editing his first magazine,
Modern Electrics, only five years earlier. Modern Electrics was an overnight success. Gernsback, who had moved to New York City from Luxembourg in 1904, first became successful after starting his own business, the Electro Importing Company, which imported and sold high quality electrical components from Germany. The Experimenter Publishing Company, a subsidiary of the Electro Importing Company, and its subsequent publications under the direction of Gernsback were the result of the experience he gained while publishing a catalog listing the Electro Importing Company’s products. Gernsback also felt that there was a “general ignorance of technology amongst the American public” and set out to correct this imbalance by publishing a periodical that would
disseminate technical and scientific information to the public.
The magazine’s final issue was the
August 1931 issue after which it was sold to
Popular Mechanics (1902) and absorbed into that magazine.
Trade
The Public Ledger (1760) is one of the world's longest continuously running magazines. Today it provides agricultural commodity news, analyses and prices. When established in 1760, however, it not only contained prices of commodities in London, but a wide variety of political, commercial and society news and commentary. It was established by
John Newbery, who was better known for his pioneering children's literature.
The Public Ledger was
London's fourth daily newspaper in a golden age from 1730 to 1772 for 'Advertisers' – two-page advertising-driven newspapers set up after political parties withdrew subsidies to London newspapers.
