[HN Gopher] Popular Science Magazine Archives, May 1872-March 2009
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Popular Science Magazine Archives, May 1872-March 2009
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-10-06 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (books.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (books.google.com)
| pfdietz wrote:
| Popular Science shuttered the print version of the magazine in
| April 2021 after 151 years of publication. The online version,
| which was started in 2021 and published quarterly, only lasted
| until November 2023.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/business/media/popular-sc...
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| I had a subscription for a short time in the 2000s, to me it
| felt like it was too popular and not enough science. It was
| like the IFL science version of people magazine
|
| National geographic had and has better science content
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| For a long time I had subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular
| Mechanics, and Scientific American. Scientific American slid
| down into the space Popular Science was by really lightening up
| the content of their analysis. (An interview with their editor-
| in-chief called it being 'more accessible' by writing for
| people who had not attended college versus for people who had
| at least a four year college degree). Everybody suffered from
| 'the web' and how much stuff was being put out for 'free' and
| nobody understood information economics yet.
|
| I still get Popular Mechanics, mostly because I subscribed
| using miles on an airline I don't fly hardly at all. And I
| ended up dropping my SciAm subscription in favor of Science
| News.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I had a subscription to SciAm when I was young, back in the
| 1970s. It was like something published on a different planet.
| mywacaday wrote:
| That funny for me to read, I stopped buying Scientific
| American I think in the early 2000s as I found the articles
| too far beyond my comprehension at time and didn't have time
| to study them in detail.
| pknerd wrote:
| wish the entire thing was downloadable
| jll29 wrote:
| Please, someone convert this to plain text.
| wannabebarista wrote:
| Much of it has been done:
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly
| sahmeepee wrote:
| Thanks for this - it's a very accessible format.
|
| I stumbled on this fantastic piece promoting the use of UTC
| time, but incidentally giving a great history of the
| standardisation of time more generally and the adoption of
| 24h clock notation over AM/PM.
|
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volu
| m...
| veunes wrote:
| > The future is going to be better, and science and technology
| are the driving forces that will help make it better.
|
| Popular Science fosters a sense of responsibility and agency (in
| a way)
| ralphc wrote:
| I recommend the April 1929 issue. I found this in an antique
| store 10+ years ago, and it has (at least) two articles of
| interest:
|
| The main one is "Einstein's Topsy-Turvy world", complete with
| picture of the 50-year old Einstein with dark hair. It talks
| about his "Unified Field Theory" book, attempting to explain it
| to a 1920's lay audience. It includes an artist's rendition of
| the 4th dimension.
|
| I also found interesting an article about someone learning to
| fly. This is 26 years after the Wright brothers and aviation is
| still young.
| ot1138 wrote:
| My dad subscribed to these for many years from the 50s-70s. I
| used to sit in our attic reading old issues, with projects based
| around vacuum tubes, transistors, lasers (!) and even
| surveillance. It seriously ignited my love of engineering.
|
| I came across new issues in the 90s as an adult and the articles
| seemed to be quite dumbed down. It had lost the magic of those
| old issues.
| bluedino wrote:
| Same here but from the 80's. Lots of early home computers and
| peripherals which were obsolete by the time I read them (early
| 90's)
| wannabebarista wrote:
| I've been reading the first few years of Popular Science for a
| project [0]. In the 1870s, the magazine is an interesting slice
| of science and philosophy. It really shows the breadth and power
| of Edward Youmans' network.
|
| Here's a cool article [1] about how the founding of Popular
| Science was bound up with Herbert Spencer's book _The Study of
| Sociology_ (1873) and was printed on a shoestring budget.
|
| [0] https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1873/
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/986404
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Not sure you're qualified to comment here if you don't already
| have all these downloaded somewhere on an external drive.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Such archives are the vast untapped pool of AI training data.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Your 2025 Honda civic won't start? Have you tried cranking it
| with the handle in the hood or adjusting the choke?
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(page generated 2024-10-06 23:00 UTC)