“Popular Science” Magazine – 91 Years Worth of Back Issues In The Public Domain

Another one of America’s great magazines dedicated to science and technology (and a whole bunch of other interesting things)…

Here’s a little publishing background and history from Wikipedia…

Popular Science Monthly was founded in May 1872 by Edward L. Youmans to disseminate scientific knowledge to the educated layman. Youmans had previously worked as an editor for the weekly Appleton’s Journal and persuaded them to publish his new journal. Early issues were mostly reprints of English periodicals. The journal became an outlet for writings and ideas of Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Louis Pasteur, Henry Ward Beecher, William James, Thomas Edison, John Dewey and James McKeen Cattell. In 1877 William Youmans, Edward’s brother, joined Popular Science Monthly. The publisher, D. Appleton & Company, was forced by economic reasons to sell the journal in 1900.

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 Modern Publishing Company had purchased Electrician and Mechanic magazine in 1914 and over the next two years merged several magazines together into a science magazine for a general audience. The magazine had a series of name changes: Modern Electrics and Mechanics, Popular Electricity and Modern Mechanics, Modern Mechanics and finally World’s Advance. The publishers were still looking for a new name so they purchased Popular Science Monthly. 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.

For whatever reason, copyright renewals for issues of “Popular Science” are non-existent – in fact, not a single issue published before 1964 as a whole was ever renewed as evidenced by this entry found by checking the First Periodicals list at the Online Books Page.

You’ll find the following entry…

Remember, for issues published between 1923 – 1950, you’ll still need to check the Catalog of Copyright Entries for renewals of individual articles and photographs but I bet you’ll find more often than not that renewals were very rarely made (but check anyway before using an article).

For issues published in 1950-63, I’ll save you some work. Here’s what I found at Copyright.gov when checking for renewals of serial publications…

Yep, no issues as a whole were renewed and just a tiny handful of articles were renewed (4 exactly). CLICK HERE to reproduce this search for yourself (remember to sort records by date ascending).

That leaves roughly 91 years worth of “Popular Science” magazine content in the public domain!

Google Books is currently hosting “Popular Science” magazine back issues in their archives – including the Public Domain issues. You can browse the back issues online RIGHT HERE.

The Google scans are incredible – page by page scans with nothing left out – even all of the advertisements including the classifieds have been left intact. You can’t download the mags in PDF format like you can with most of the Public Domain books on Google Book Search but you can still dig through each issue and check out the contents.

Also, each mag is text searchable so you can search through the issues by keyword. To search for a keyword across the entire archive, use Google Books Advanced Search as it now includes these mags in the search results – just pop “Popular Science” in the “Title” field.

Here’s a few cover samples to give you an idea of what you’ll find…

Popular Science was famous for featuring articles that covered all sorts of niches, not just stuff for science nerds. The issue below has a great article about making tables…

And don’t forget about the annual home-improvement issues if you’re working in the home-improvement niche. This issue has a killer article about building an extra room for your house…