Popular Science Monthly was founded in May 1872 by Edward L. Youmans. It was a science and technology magazine equivalent to Scientific American or Science. James McKeen Cattell became the editor in 1900 and the publisher in 1901. Cattell had a background in academics and continued publishing articles for educated readers. By 1915 the readership was declining and publishing a science journal was a financial challenge. In a September 1915 editorial, Cattell related these difficulties to his readers and that the journal had been "transferred" to a group that wanted the name for a general audience magazine. Next month the subscribers would be receive a new journal titled Scientific Monthly that would continue the academic tradition. Scientific Monthly was published until 1958 when it was absorbed into Science.
The new owners were Henry Fisher, Robert Wilson and Oliver Capen of Modern Publishing. The October 1915 issue was titled Popular Science Monthly and World's Advance. The volume number (Vol. 87, No. 4) was that of Popular Science but the content was that of World's Advance. The new editor was Waldemar Kaempffert, a former editor of Scientific American
The change in Popular Science Monthly was dramatic. The old version was a scholarly journal that had eight to ten articles in a 100 page issue. There would be ten to twenty photographs or illustrations. The new version had hundreds of short, easy to read articles with hundreds of illustrations. Editor Kaembffert was writing for "the home craftsman and hobbyist who wanted to know something about the world of science." The circulation doubled in the first year.
Popular Science Monthly was two different magazines for during the last half of 1915 and this presented a dilemma for librarians who needed to have them bound into book volumes. The library journal, Bulletin of Bibliography, printed the conflicting recommendations received from the new and old publishers. The journal editor promised to publish a "list of librarians and book-binders who have gone to Battle Creek to recuperate."
Read more about this topic: Electrician And Mechanic
Famous quotes containing the word science:
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)