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Friday, 19 March 2010 |
By MITCH TRAPHAGEN
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In the “This is One of the Cool Things about the Web” department, Popular Science magazine has partnered with Google to offer their entire 137-year magazine archive free for browsing. According to Popular Science, each issue appears as it did in its original time of publication, including the front page and advertisements.
Searching the 1962 editions near my birth date, I discovered that guys wearing suits or sport coats and ties really liked to pose near power tools in advertisements in those days.
 And speaking of guys, apparently getting a job operating heavy equipment was restricted to them based on an advertisement that began, “Men...Get that Job!” Fortunately, if lighter equipment was your thing, tools were cheap. You could earn $7,108.50 a year servicing radiators or acquire an engineering degree in just 27 months. Oh yeah, and an authentic replica of a German Luger pistol was just $3.95. That’s right, three dollars and ninety-five cents. There was no confirmation as to whether the thing actually shot bullets, but the ad reminded me a bit of the x-ray glasses advertised in my youth. Just as there were a lot of disappointed male adolescents wearing silly looking glasses, there may well have been a few disappointed lunatics holding a fake non-shooting Luger.
There were also a number of letters to the editor with suggestions about how space missions in the future could carry enough water for astronauts, along with testimonials from people who claim their automobiles have honestly and truly passed the 100,000 mile mark so that it is indeed possible to drive a car that far.
The archive currently allows searches through keywords. The magazine plans to provide more advanced search technology in the future. Perhaps someday that will include mind control; and your grandchildren will read all about how we had to use “keywords” and our fingers to type on keyboards. Hey! It’s not impossible. We figured out the astronaut / water problem, didn’t we?
The archive is available at www.popsci.com/archives
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