I stumbled on an April 1950 article predating and predicting the H-Bomb: "Production of the hydrogen atomic bomb has been ordered by the President of the United States. Within one to three years, it is unofficially predicted, the first of the most awesome military weapons ever built may be ready for test."
https://books.google.ca/books?id=DC0DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA1...
And sure enough in the 1950s when the U.S. had a can-do government that could get things done on schedule did it within "one to three years" as predicted:
- Operation Greenhouse in 1951 as first successful release of nuclear fusion energy raised expectations to a near certainty that the concept would work. (1)
- Then on 1 November 1952, the Teller–Ulam configuration was tested at full scale in the "Ivy Mike" shot at an island in the Enewetak Atoll. (2)
Somehow I had the impression that in the 1950s, the government and the press (at the government's behest) were much more secretive about how the H-bomb would work, but I found the Popular Science article surprisingly informative. We say thermonuclear weapon rather than H-bomb these days, but I didn't see anything in the article that seemed inaccurate compared to what's known publicly today.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greenhouse
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon#History
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.
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)
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...
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.
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.
I had a subscription to SciAm when I was young, back in the 1970s. It was like something published on a different planet.
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
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.
Unfortunately recent issues since the last couple elections have become partisan. We should stop using scientific institutions as means to political ends. Its bad for science in general, and sows distrust.
No one who reads scientific american supports X candidate will suddenly vote for them. However, people who see scientific american has begun to play in the political arena will think less of them. Myself and some friends have agreed they should stick with what they know, and not become a political instrument
The other side of this is that politics won’t stay out of science. We have a number of areas where the scientific consensus has been well established but some people pretend otherwise for political reasons, and while in the past that was somewhat distributed on the political spectrum it has increasingly become concentrated in single parties. I don’t know how we can expect experts not to use their professional qualifications when rejecting false claims, especially when the alternatives being offered under false pretenses will cost lives and significant amounts of money.
I unsubscribed from Scientific American a few years back when they became a venue for political commentary instead of science. The opinion pieces try to masquerade as soft science. It's an insult to the actual scientists in their readership.
If you're looking for a replacement, I picked up MIT Tech Review. It's not a stand-in replacement for what SciAm used to be, but scratches the same itch for me.
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.
Such archives are the vast untapped pool of AI training data.
Your 2025 Honda civic won't start? Have you tried cranking it with the handle in the hood or adjusting the choke?
> 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)
wish the entire thing was downloadable
Please, someone convert this to plain text.
Much of it has been done: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly
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/Volum...
The Popular Science I recall had lots of pictures, diagrams, etc.
Not sure you're qualified to comment here if you don't already have all these downloaded somewhere on an external drive.