137 Years of Popular Science, Online, Free.

March 4, 2010 6:04 AM

Need some light reading? Popular Science has put its entire 137-year catalog online for free.
posted by backseatpilot (36 comments total)

Thanks--the old issues had some great stuff.
posted by box at 6:07 AM on March 4, 2010

I love those old "pulp novel"-style covers. This is excellent.
posted by JoanArkham at 6:09 AM on March 4, 2010

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure they didn't even have science 137 years ago.
posted by smackfu at 6:21 AM on March 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Worth it for the 70s ads alone. Thanks for posting.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:23 AM on March 4, 2010

Thanks PopSci but could you make it browseable? and linkable?
posted by DU at 6:23 AM on March 4, 2010

Wow, amazing - especially the graphics. Thank you!
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:26 AM on March 4, 2010

They're browsable on Google Books. There's no way easy way I can see to get back to the early issues, but it's better than nothing.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 6:28 AM on March 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Feel free to mentally remove one instance of "way" in that last comment.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 6:29 AM on March 4, 2010

There's no easy way I can see to get back to the early issues,

Google Books design is all over the place. If you go to an individual issue's page, it has a really good "browse all issues" navigation section to get to other issues by decade, year, and month. But if you go to the "browse all issues" link like you have, it gives a dumb simple list that only shows 30 issues per page and doesn't have navigation by date.
posted by smackfu at 6:33 AM on March 4, 2010

for free.

The site appears to be advertiser supported which is nothing like free, but still cool.
posted by three blind mice at 6:37 AM on March 4, 2010

Cool, now I can just keep a laptop in the magazine rack by the toilet.
posted by JaredSeth at 6:37 AM on March 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

A search for 'bicycle' brings up some pretty sweet results, thanks.
posted by fixedgear at 6:39 AM on March 4, 2010

There's no way easy way I can see to get back to the early issues, but it's better than nothing.

.......aaaaaaaaaand the concept of "it's all free on the internet" lives one more day. At the very least, this would cost you $5 and a very musty drag back to yr car at a flea market.

Great post. Thanks.
posted by nevercalm at 6:41 AM on March 4, 2010

A search for 'bicycle' brings up some pretty sweet results, thanks.
posted by fixedgear

Do we get booted for calling 'eponysterical' yet?
posted by nevercalm at 6:42 AM on March 4, 2010

It never gets old.
posted by fixedgear at 6:48 AM on March 4, 2010

I love the opposite of "memory hole". Kudos to whomever is responsible.
posted by vapidave at 6:51 AM on March 4, 2010

I love the opposite of "memory hole"

Memory fountain?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:52 AM on March 4, 2010

We need the World's Fair again. And I love Popular Science. Few things make science as accessible to the non-scientist. This is a treasure trove.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:56 AM on March 4, 2010

Kind of depressing reading stuff from the '70s. I remember reading them new and thinking that we'd have solved the energy crisis by now (not to mention having moon bases, colonies at L5 and flying cars).
posted by octothorpe at 7:03 AM on March 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm enormously fond of the guy who decided to protect mail trains with cyanide gas emitters. Because hey, killing everyone within a hundred yards is a small price to pay for freedom.
posted by aramaic at 7:06 AM on March 4, 2010

I used a real computer at home ... and so will you!
posted by octothorpe at 7:12 AM on March 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Reading some of the stuff from the 1870s you see how difficult it is for man to conquer science and how arrogant we are about our knowledge thereof. What will people a hundred or so years from now be saying about our science pronouncements?
posted by caddis at 7:25 AM on March 4, 2010

The site appears to be advertiser supported which is nothing like free

Wait, advertiser-supported doesn't mean free anymore? I mean, sure, ads are a nag and all, but can we now call PBS free tv?
posted by nevercalm at 7:38 AM on March 4, 2010

And octothorpe's linked article, with a computer with a dial phone modem, is priceless.
posted by nevercalm at 7:42 AM on March 4, 2010

Actually, I learned to program on a modem-linked teletype exactly like that one in the article I linked. I still have a roll of paper tape that I carefully stored a tic-tak-toe program that I wrote in 1979 in HP 2000 basic.
posted by octothorpe at 7:48 AM on March 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

ONLY 137 years? Lazy scientists!
posted by blue_beetle at 7:58 AM on March 4, 2010

From octothorpe's link:

"Time sharing, most experts agree, is the key to the computer's future, at least for general use. A few years ago, when people thought about household computers at all, they thought of some small, inexpensive, individual unit that would keep track of the family checking account and automatically type out the Christmas-card labels. Now we know that it won't be like that at all. The reason is economic. The bigger and faster the computer, the cheaper it makes each computation. Consequently, it will be far cheaper to build one monster computer with thousands or even millions of customers hooked to it than to have small, individual machines in individual homes."

Heheh, stupid experts. (Although the recent "cloud computing" push may vindicate them in the end).
posted by Popular Ethics at 7:58 AM on March 4, 2010

Remember kids, even if your wife calls the shots with your dog, manliness still exists in the quiet humility of checking your tire pressure.
posted by Hoenikker at 8:05 AM on March 4, 2010

Wordless Workshop rules!
posted by JHarris at 8:17 AM on March 4, 2010

Already I have learned from the April, 1938 issue that German zoologist Baron Karl von Frisch has concluded that fish can talk, based on his observation that "small fish often make faint, piping sounds when excited, and that goldfish are particularly responsive to certain man-made sounds."

However, this seemingly conclusive evidence of sentience and culture among the fishes was not enough to stop Miami sculptor Gustav Bohland from developing a chemical process for turning the lenses of their eyes into "hard, brilliant, pearllike gems."

The path of science often passes through the barren vale of tragedy. Popular science especially so.
posted by Naberius at 8:36 AM on March 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

The first thing i searched for? "Flying car." Some results as old as the 1930's.
posted by d1rge at 10:59 AM on March 4, 2010

When is this going to happen with Scientific American?
posted by jamjam at 11:41 AM on March 4, 2010

I don't get those people. In my experience, a magazine called Unpopular Science would sell a lot better. What are they waiting for?
posted by Twang at 4:45 PM on March 4, 2010

@octotype "Actually, I learned to program on a modem-linked teletype exactly like that one in the article I linked."

Those were fab! Did yours have the punch-tape reader to save your programs on?

The one I used let up to 400-500 users time-share a single computer. When it got that busy, it took up to 20 seconds to echo back a single character. Oooh man, those were the good old days.
posted by Twang at 4:51 PM on March 4, 2010

So, before we can send a men to the moon, we must blow up an atomic bomb on it.

We must blow up the moon!
posted by Artnchicken at 10:33 PM on March 4, 2010

Twang, yea punch tape was the only way that we could save our work. This was circa 1979 so the tech was pretty old even then and we finally got some PET computers the next year. We all connected to on HP 2000 mainframe in Trenton which hundreds of other high-schools in NJ were connected to at the same time.
posted by octothorpe at 8:23 AM on March 5, 2010