"Futurism" is what people believed the future would be like at a given time. Similarly, "retrofuturism" is futurism of the past. Most people think of Victorian futurism (steampunk) and 1950s/1960s futurism (atompunk). 1920s futurism sits right in the middle, mostly forgotten.
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.
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