A Century of Progress

"The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end."

So declared the U.S. Patent Commissioner, Henry L. Ellsworth, in 1844. Men were still goggle-eyed over the recent invention of Morse's telegraph, Howe's sewing machine, Goodyear's vulcanized rubber, McCormick's reaper. Many agreed with Ellsworth that science must be near the end of its rope.

Birth of a Crusader. A few months later in Manhattan an itinerant Yankee cobbler, house painter, fiddler, schoolmaster and inventor named Rufus Porter boldly started a weekly called Scientific American. Last week Scientific American, publishing its 100th anniversary issue, paused to celebrate an eventful career.

A crusader from birth, the magazine has been in the thick of the hurly-burly of U.S. invention. Through its Manhattan editorial office trooped Morse, Gatling, the Maxim brothers, Edison, many another great inventor. Scientific American used to maintain a patent advice agency which, besides giving the magazine many a news scoop, presided benevolently over inventors, encouraging the sincere, diligently exposing the fakers. (Typical case: a "perpetual motion" machine which baffled everybody until Scientific American's editors X-rayed it, discovered inside a clocklike apparatus which could be wound by key through a simulated worm-hole.)

Secret Subway. The Scientific American led its first issue with a picture of a new railroad car, captioned: "Let any person contrast the awkward and uncouth cars of '35 with these superbly splendid long cars . . . which are calculated to avoid atmospheric resistance and contribute ease and comfort to passengers, while flying at the rate of 30 or 40 miles per hour."

Its editorial experts demanded a Manhattan subway as early as 1849. When city officials paid no attention, the magazine hired a crew of workmen and attempted to dig a subway secretly under downtown Broadway, smuggling the excavated dirt out through the nearby cellars of sympathizers. A Tribune reporter nosed out the venture before it was finished.

Rumba Fancier. Among the magazine's famed editors have been Waldemar Kaempffert (now science editor of the New York Times); and the late, brilliant Edward E. Free. But Scientific American has been dominated by the family which has owned and published it through almost its entire career, the Manhattan Munns, one of Ward McAllister's original "400." Present editor and publisher (third in the line) is Orson Desaix Munn, 61, a patent lawyer, crack bird hunter and fisherman, rumba fancier, familiar figure in Manhattan cafe society. He passes on everything that goes into the magazine.

"Limitless Frontiers." Now down to a circulation of some 50,000 (it once had 75,000), Scientific American has dropped its crusading, confines itself to semi-technical reporting of U.S. industrial research. But it is still enthusiastic about the future of U.S. invention. In the lead article for its anniversary issue, famed Inventor Charles F. Kettering* predicts "limitless frontiers" for U.S. science in the next 100 years.

*Who last week was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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