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Following is and extract from Frank Luther Mott's "History of American magazine" in
five volumes. (out of print) The author spent most of his life till his death writing
these books. It is the most complete work on the subject I know of.
1 TITLE: Scientific American
FIRST ISSUE :
August
28, 1845. Current.
PERIODICITY: Weekly, 1845-0ctober IS, 1921; monthly, November 1921current. I, August
28,
1845-September 19,
1846; II-XIII,
annual volumes,
September 26,
1846-September 4,
1858; XIV, September II, 1858-June
25,
1859. New Series,
I-current, July 2, 1859-current, semiannual
volumes.
(The notation "New Series" was dropped
after July 1888.)
PUBLISHERS: Rufus Porter, New York, 1845-46; Munn & Company, New York, 1846-current (under the name of Scientific American Publishing Company, 1919-32).
EDITORS :
Rufus Porter, 1845-47; Orson Desaix Munn and Alfred Ely Beach,
1847-48; O. D.
Munn,
Salem Howe Wales, and A. E. Beach, 1848-71; O. D. Munn and A.
E. Beach, 1871-96; O. D. Munn
and
Frederick Converse Beach, 1896-1907; Charles Allen Munn and F. C.
Beach, 1907-18; C.
A.
Munn, 1919-24;
Orson Desaix Munn [II], 1925-current. (Managing editors: Waldemar Bernhard Kaempfiert, 19II-15; Austin C. Lescarboura,
1919-24.)
INDEXES: Readers' Guide, Cumulative Index, Engineering Index, Annual Library Index.
REFERENCE: "Seventy
Years of the Scientific American," in the Seventieth Anniversary Number of the Scientific American, CXII, 540-546 (June 5, 1915).
THE founder of the
Scientific American was one of those inventive Yankees whose versatility, "handiness," and restless "projecting" life have made his type a legend. Rufus Porter was apprenticed to a shoemaker at fifteen, but cobbling was too dull for him; he liked better to play the fife for military companies on their field days and the fiddle for dancing parties. So he ran away from his cobbling. Then he was apprenticed to a housepainter, and during the War of 1812 he painted gunboats and fifed for the Portland light infantry. Later he painted sleighs, beat the drum for the soldiers, taught drumming and wrote a manual on the subject, and then became a country schoolmaster until his wandering feet and impatient mind took him away from the schoolhouse.
In
1820 he invented a camera obscura with mirrors so arranged that with its aid he could draw a satisfactory portrait in fifteen minutes. This gave him a motive for the wandering life which he craved. Soon he added a revolving almanac to peddle as a sideline. Experiments with a horsepower boat ate up his savings, and he returned to portrait
'
painting and later to landscape painting. But his itch for invention would not let him rest; and he produced in succession a cord-making machine, a patent clock, a steam carriage, a portable horsepower,
a corn sheller, a churn, a washing machine (of course), a signal telegraph, a fire alarm,
a revolving rifle, a flying ship, a trip hammer, a fog whistle, an engine lathe,
a rotary plow, a portable house, and many other devices. Some of these were successful and gave him the funds to sink in failures. In the intervals of invention, Porter edited the New York Mechanic in
1840, moving it to Boston the following year and calling it the American Mechanic; but he left it in
1842 to do some more inventing. He returned to the editorial field, however, in r845; and while experimenting with electrotyping processes in New York he founded a weekly paper which he called the Scientific American. The first number, a four-page small folio at $2.00 a year, was issued on August 28,
1845.It was ,illustrated by a few woodcuts and bore the subtitle: "The Advocate of Industry and Journal of Mechanical and Other Improvements." It was devoted primarily to new inventions, but it also contained some fragmentary essays on moral subjects "selected" from other periodicals, as well as some poetical "pieces," the choice of which reflect no credit on the editor'? literary judgment. Circulation amounted to only a few hundred.2
It would have been too much to expect of Porter that he should stick to his new paper for very long; and accordingly he sold it for a few hundred dollars in July
1846, though his name was carried as editor for ten months longer.
The purchasers were Orson Desaix Munn and Alfred Ely
, Beach. Beach was the son of Moses Y. Beach, famous editor and publisher of the New York Sun. The elder Beach was himself an inventor of importance, and the son inherited his mechanical interests and ability. When the younger Beach, not yet twenty-one,
working,
with his father on the Sun, heard that the Scientific American was for sale, he suggested to his old schoolmate Munn, then conducting a mercantile business in a small Massachusetts town, that they should go into it together. Thus
was the firm of Munn
& Company organized, issuing its first number July 23, 1846.
As the publisher of a paper devoted chiefly to patents, Munn & Company found themselves in close contact with inventors of all sorts and besieged by questions about the methods of patenting and about patent law. A patent agency was accordingly set up. Unlike many others of its class, it was conducted on high principles and gave honest advice, and in the course of a decade or two it became a very prosperous concern and the largest agency of the kind in the world. Its relation to the Scientific American was one of mutual helpfulness. When A. B. Wilson brought the model of his sewing machine (later the Wheeler and Wilson) to Munn & Company in 1849, it was written up for the American. In the same way, Thomas A. Edison got a good story on his new talking machine in 18n. The leading inventors of America were patrons of Munn & Company, Samuel F. B. Morse, Elias Howe, Captain James B. Eads, Captain John Ericsson,
Dr. R. J. Gatling, Peter Cooper Hewitt, Thomas A. Edison.3 And even the obscure and unsuccessful inventions, of which the
Scientific American publicized thousands (for every patron of Munn & Company got at least a few lines in the paper) were often interesting and sometimes significant in illustrating trends of experimentation. The American featured these articles, and one of its most important departments was the weekly publication of the official list of patents, "with the claims annexed," received directly from the United States Patent Office; but the contents of the paper were not limited to matters about inventions. The new publishers had enlarged the weekly issue to eight pages, and a variety of information of mechanical and scientific nature was'
presented. And that we may furnish an acceptable family newspaper [said the editors at the beginning of the second volume] we shall continue to give in brief and condensed form the most useful and interesting intelligence of passing events -not omitting a small portion of serious matter, suitable for Sunday reading -but avoiding the disgusting and pernicious details of crime.4 Some advertising was printed from the first; but each advertisement was limited to sixteen lines, without display or illustration. Circulation came but slowly at first; but it passed 10,000 in 1848 and 20,000 in 1852. The next year it reached 30,000approximately its circulation for the next decade. In 1848 Munn and Beach had been joined in their venture by Salem Howe Wales, another New Englander come to New York to make his fortune. Wales was active in the editorial work; his letters from the Paris Exposition in 1855 attracted wide attention.
In July 1859 the Scientific American began a new series, with semiannual volumes. It then changed from a small folio of eight pages to a large quarto of sixteen, keeping the price at $2.00.
The editorial policy remained about the same. The general miscellany had faded out of the picture several years earlier. Now the illustrated articles on new inventions came first, as always, followed by news and commentary on patent law, the patent claim list, some general scientific notes, a query column, a few clippings of a scientific nature, and a page of advertising.
There was but little interest shown in such fields as biology and geology; but there was some astronomy, and chemistry and medicine had occasional innings. Agriculture was given
Some attention; and fields in which applied physics played a large role, like transportation and manufacturing, occupied much space.
Munn & Company had prospered and now had their Washington bureau, with
.
Judge Charles Mason, former commissioner of patents, as their legal adviser. The Civil War brought more matter about arms and naval devices -a field in which the paper had always maintained a considerable interest. The subscription rate was increased to $3.00 in 1863. Two years
-after the close of the war, the page size was increased to small folio once more in order to accommodate increased advertising; better paper, press work, and engraving made a decidedly handsomer periodical.
.
The Scientific American was a journal of opinions. It fought fakirs and quacks, including perpetual motion cranks and all their tribe. On the other hand, it was a firm believer from the beginning in aviation. Porter had indeed built a kind of forerunner of the modern dirigible during his editorship of the paper.
Ballooning was followed closely. As aeronautics developed, the American opposed the impractical flapping-wing boats and the screw fliers; but when Langley conducted his experiments in
1903, it was one of the few observers to lend him encouragement even in his failure. It was a strong partisan of the Wrights. It offered a
$2,500
trophy for flights by heavier-than-air machines, which was finally won by Glenn H. Curtiss in I910; and through the magazine Edwin Gould offered his $15,000 prize for a heavier-than-air machine with two power plants.
Another early enthusiasm of the paper was that for subway transportation. In
1849 it told of a project for
"An
Underground Railroad in Broadway" as follows: The plan is to tunnel Broadway through the whole length, with openings in stairways at every corner.
The
subterranean passage is to be laid down with
a
double track, with a
road for foot-passengers on either side -the whole to be brilliantly lighted with
gas.
The cars, which are to be drawn by horses, will
stop
ten seconds at every corner, thus performing the trip up and down, including
stoppages,
in about an hour.5 But no progress was made along these lines because of the unfriendliness of the city government and the ridicule of New York newspapers. At last Beach secured legislative authority to build a short underground pneumatic tube, somewhat after the London plan, and this he proceeded to do secretly and without Tammany's franchise. In six nights early in February I870 a large gang of workmen dug an eight-foot tunnel under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray, the dirt being carried off through the cellar of a building whose owner sympathized with the project. But: just as the work was being rushed to an end, the Tribune discovered what was going on, through a reporter who had disguised himself as a workman
;
and it exposed the whole scheme. Beach then utilized the publicity which had been given the Scientific American tunnel to charge the curious twenty-five cents a head for a view of the subway and the pneumatic machine. They saw the cylindrical tunnel, twenty-one feet below Broadway, with a car that fitted it like the carrier in a pneumatic tube (which it was) and held eighteen persons; the car was blown from one end of the subway to the other and then sucked back when the compressed-air engine was reversed. For a full year this experimental tube was in use; many persons were convinced, and some of the newspapers, but Tammany was able ultimately to kill the bill authorizing a subway and obtain the enactment of one calling for a five-million-dollar elevated steam road.6 It was about this time that Wales left the Scientific American to hold various positions in the city administration. The sons of the remaining proprietors entered the organization in the late seventies and early eighties; especially to be noted because they were later to control the property are Charles A. Munn and Frederick C. Beach.
In order to take care of a flood of material about the Centennial at Philadelphia, it was decided to launch another periodical at the beginning of 1876; this was the origin of the weekly Scientific American Supplement.7 Besides the articles and illustrations bearing on the great exposition, the Supplement printed much of scientific thought abroad, and especially of scientific discussion which was "more technical and special in nature." There seemed to be a place for such a periodical after the exposition was over. Though it published some material very similar to that which appeared in the parent magazine, it was not
devoted primarily to mechanics and was generally more interested in pure science. Then in 1885 Munn & Company founded a monthly Scientific American: Architects' and Builders' Edition, later called Scientific American Building
Monthly's in order to meet the growing demand for specialized periodicals and to take advantage of the large advertising business in the construction lines. The Building Monthly was a well-illustrated forty-page magazine which featured building plans; in connection with it Munn & Company maintained a staff of architects who furnished plans and specifications to prospective builders by mail. Monthly export and Spanish editions completed the family of Scientific American periodicals.
The parent paper had a circulation of 40,000 by 1880, and it came very near to 50,000 before the hard times of the early nineties affected it. That retardation was only temporary, and in a few years it was again forging forward to new high levels. Advertising was copious and profitable.
The World's Fair at Chicago occupied many pages of the paper in the nineties. Electrical developments, the experiments in aeronautics, and the advent of the automobile furnished the feature serials of those years. The automobile vehicle had been a familiar idea to readers of the Scientific American for many years when it first startled pedestrians and frightened horses on our city streets just after the turn of the century. No year had passed for more than half a century that this journal had not exhibited plans and pictures for horseless carriages moved by all
sorts
of power. The experiments of such foreign inventors as Cugnot, Trevethick, Guerney, Church, and Lenoir had been duly chronicled.
When the motor car really came to stay, the Scientific American was for some years a chief periodical of the industry.
A. E. Beach died in 1896 and was succeeded as secretary of the company by his son F. C. Beach. O. D. Munn lived until 19°7, though his work devolved, in his last years, largely upon his son C. A. Munn, who followed him as president. Circulation ran up to 75,000, and in 19II the paper was enlarged to twenty four small-folio pages. A
"midmonth
number" was still larger; it was usually devoted to a specialty, such as an automobile review or an agricultural issue, and had a colored cover. A little later all numbers came to have the bright covers, and after a few years the midmonth special was abandoned. Articles were now signed, commonly by the names of government bureau heads or officers of industrial concerns, but occasionally by university professors. Waldemar B. Kaempffert was an assistant editor from 1897, and managing editor 19II-15. Illustration, now almost entirely by half tone, was copious.
In 1915 a seventieth anniversary number was issued which detailed the progress of mechanical improvement along many lines.
The World War brought into the pages of the Scientific
American many articles about arms, aircraft, submarines,
and chemical warfare. The
subscription price was raised in I9I7 to $4.00, and two years later the page size was changed to quarto to conform with the more popular magazine format. The printers' strike of I9I9 forced the American, in common with several other periodicals,
to resort to the use of plates made from
typewritten sheets. The same disturbance was the occasion for the suspension of the weekly Supplement, which was supplanted by the Scientific American Monthly.
It was perhaps owing to the increasing force of specialized competition that the circulation of the American declined somewhat during and following the war.
Whatever the cause, the fact of the decline,
added to the increasing costs of an inflationary period, determined Munn & Company (which now took the name of Scientific American Publishing Company for its periodical business) to make the Scientific
American a monthly and to consolidate with it the magazine called the Scientific
American Monthly. This was done November I921. The editorial staff through these years was composed of J. Bernard Walker,
Austin C. Lescarboura, J. Malcolm Bird,
Albert A.
Hopkins (who had come to the paper in I890)
,
and others
; while C. A. Munn, O. D. Munn (II), and Allan C. Hoffman were officers of the company and the conductors of the journal.
In I924,
following the death of C. A. Munn,
the second Orson
D. Munn, grandson of the founder of Munn & Company, succeeded his uncle as chief editor and publisher. Patent lists, once a chief feature of the Scientific American, dwindled in these later years and finally disappeared,
though a department of legal news remained.
After the
changes of I921,
the scope of the magazine broadened;
its articles about new inventions had been decreasing for some years, and now its function as a purveyor of science to the people became paramount. It was no longer the inventor's paper, but a periodical of popular science. "It has been the constant aim of this journal," said the editor in I910,
"to impress the fact that science is not inherently dull, heavy or abstruse, but that
it is essentially fascinating, understandable, and full of undeniable charm." the
Scientific American has succeeded in doing, not only in its early history but in its later years. It has met the two requirements of good scientific writing -reliability and readability.
One of the values of the Scientific American which endeared it to several generations of boys and young men was a kind of personal quality difficult to account for. Its columns of queries and answers, its willingness to answer correspondents by letter, its lucidity, and its appeal to the ambitious youth of a machine age -all may help to explain this feeling which many of the subscribers to the paper had for it. The boy Thomas Edison walked three miles to get his copy each week and doubtless many other inventors and industrialists were equally stimulated by it in a formative period. In this respect it is probable that the Scientific American had a significance at least for its first sixty or seventy years unapproached in kind and effect by any other periodical.
Notes; 10 Scientific American, CXII,
543 (June 5,
1915).
George P. Rowell & Company, Centennial Newspaper Exhibit (New York, 1876), p. 223·
• George P. Rowell & Company, Centennial Newspaper Exhibit (New York, 1876), p. 223·
• Scientific American, V, 104 (November 3, 1849).
6 Ibid., CXII, 541 (June 5, 1915)
.
'Published January
1, 1876-December 27,1919,
in 88 volumes.
Edited
and published throughout by Munn & Company. 8 The change in title occurred in 1902. This periodical was begun November 1885 and was supplanted January 1905 by American Homes and Gardens, subtitled "New
Series of Scientific American Building Monthly." The new periodical was also monthly, and was a profusely
illustrated high-grade magazine. It was absorbed in September 1915 by
House and Garden.
• Scientific American, CXII, 540 (June 5, 1915). • Ibid.,
II, 5 (September 26, 1846)
.
9 This
• Scientific
American,
CIII,
514
(December 31, 1910).
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