On the cutting edge of gimmickry

Originally published 13 April 1992

Recent­ly, in a fit of nos­tal­gia, I pur­chased copies of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence and Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics from the newsstand.

I had­n’t read these mag­a­zines for near­ly 40 years, not since my teens. Back then, I read them vora­cious­ly. They were part of the rea­son I decid­ed to study sci­ence and engi­neer­ing in college.

My father brought these mag­a­zines into our house. He was the quin­tes­sen­tial pop­u­lar sci­en­tist, an engi­neer with a knack for tin­ker­ing. Our base­ment was fit­ted out as his work­shop — a work­bench, pow­er tools, a hun­dred bot­tles full of fas­ten­ers, wash­ers, gas­kets and thingam­abobs of every sort. Noth­ing mechan­i­cal or elec­tri­cal was ever dis­card­ed at our house; my father squir­reled every­thing away. “You nev­er know when some­thing like this might come in handy,” he used to say.

The muses that inspired

In a cor­ner of the work­shop was an ever-grow­ing pile of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence and Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics. These were the sources of his prodi­gious inspi­ra­tions, the mus­es that inspired his many projects. A new way to keep the gut­ters from clog­ging up with leaves. A new way to twid­dle the car­bu­re­tor to make the car run smoother. A new jig for cut­ting pick­ets for a fence. Pop­u­lar Sci­ence and Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics kept my father on the cut­ting edge of gimmickry.

To his pile of well-thumbed mag­a­zines I often retired for enter­tain­ment. Dur­ing long after­noons I sat hud­dled under the base­ment stairs read­ing about the lat­est inno­va­tions in high and low tech­nol­o­gy. As I recall, cov­er sto­ries almost always fea­tured some futur­is­tic mode of trans­porta­tion: elec­tric auto­mo­biles, ocean-going hov­er­craft, fold­ing-wing air­planes that would fit in the fam­i­ly garage. News-notes fea­tured such things as mul­ti-tipped screw­drivers, self-flush­ing toi­lets and sprayed-con­crete houses.

It was from these mag­a­zines, also, that I first heard about com­put­ers, radio astron­o­my, atom­ic ener­gy, and space flight. That nook under the base­ment stairs was­n’t a bad place to get an education.

And, now, 40 years lat­er, I’m pleased to see that noth­ing, real­ly, has changed. The mag­a­zines still con­tain the engag­ing mix of slick tech­nol­o­gy and seri­ous sci­ence that made the sci­ence seem pos­i­tive­ly palat­able to the teenag­er. Here too is the same gee-whiz utopi­anism that fed the teenager’s sense of opti­mism and wonder.

Just look at some of the items fea­tured in [1992] issues of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence and Pop­u­lar Mechanics:

Nite­M­ates flash­light slip­pers, to avoid mishaps on those mid­night for­ays into the kitchen. Sim­ply tap your heels to light the kryp­ton bulb in the toe of each slipper.

A bed­side alarm clock that shuts off the alarm for four min­utes when you speak to it roughly.

A Gen­er­al Motors pro­to­type auto­mo­bile that gets 100 miles to the gallon.

A NASA work­horse rock­et for the 21st century.

And, yes, here too are oth­er things I remem­ber from my youth:

The goofy ads for every­thing from ele­va­tor shoes to 12-in‑1 mul­ti­tool sur­vival knives.

Plans for build­ing your own gyro­copter or orna­men­tal bird bath.

Two-page, full-col­or ads for spark plugs and faucets.

Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics was found­ed in 1902. Pop­u­lar Sci­ence goes back to 1872. Both mag­a­zines con­tain a “Look­ing Back” fea­ture — a page of excerpts from issues of 25, 50 and 100 years ago for Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, and 30, 60 and 90 years ago for Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics. The 30th Anniver­sary issue of Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics, pub­lished in the depths of the Great Depres­sion, con­tained arti­cles on “Machines to Raise Wages” and “Lux­u­ries for Every­one.” As far as I can tell, both mag­a­zines have main­tained a clear sense of their mis­sion since issue num­ber one: praise the prac­ti­cal, exalt Amer­i­can inge­nu­ity, and keep an upbeat atti­tude about the future.

A hearty celebration of the practical

Yes, there is some­thing vague­ly jin­go­is­tic, white, and male about the mag­a­zines, but you won’t find pol­i­tics in these pages, or racism, or macho-swag­ger. Just con­trivances, con­trap­tions, wid­gets, doohick­eys, and a hearty cel­e­bra­tion of prac­ti­cal sci­ence and state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy. I’ll bet I’m not the only kid who was nudged toward the study of sci­ence or engi­neer­ing by these magazines.

It was fun to peruse them again, to see that noth­ing has changed, and to regret that I have been so long out of touch.

Read­ing the cur­rent issues of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence and Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics I am sud­den­ly back under the base­ment stairs, rum­mag­ing through my father’s old issues of the mag­a­zines, cir­ca 1945 – 1950, and imbib­ing a down-to-earth phi­los­o­phy that has served me well for 40 years: Hap­pi­ness is unclogged gut­ters and spark plugs that are per­fect­ly gapped.