For Men Only

Although it was a little magazine in 1872, it got a big reception. In pulpit and press, the newborn Popular Science Monthly was denounced as the devilish work of atheists and evolutionists. But blind Editor Edward Livingston Youmans, no atheist but a devout missionary from the world of science to the world of laymen, took the abuse in stride. "The work of creating science," he wrote in Vol. I, No. 1, "has been organized for centuries. . . . The work of diffusing science ... is clearly the next great task of civilization."

As editor of International Scientific Series, Youmans had talked Herbert Spencer into writing a book for him. Excited by The Study of Sociology that Spencer sent him, he talked the Appletons into starting the magazine so as to run Spencer's book serially. Two years later Spencer wrote him: "I think you ought to be satisfied if ... you have reached a circulation of 12,000. ... I am rather inclined to shake my head when you talk about making it more popular."

Last week, on its 75th Birthday, Popular Science was hardly as intellectual as in Youmans' day, but it was much (circ. 1,000,000) more popular. Its 288-page anniversary issue proudly called the roll of such contributors as Henry George, Charles Darwin, William James, Havelock Ellis, John Dewey, Thomas A. Edison, Charles Kettering. By shrewdly aiming at the home mechanic who yearns for a speaking acquaintance with atomic physics, and the scientist who yearns for a handcraft hobby, PSM had become the giant in its oddly assorted field.

Like most of the others (Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Mechanix Illustrated, Science Illustrated, etc.), it was still a men's magazine: 99% of its readers are males from 18 to 60. Its crowded advertising pages were cluttered, as they have been for years, with opportunity ads (Get into Radio, Learn Massage at Home, etc.) and bulging with the biceps of the bodybuilders. But editorially PSM had been vastly slicked up by hefty Editor (since 1945) Perry Githens. Githens had sharpened the magazine's words-&-pictures technique, shoved the gadget and how-to-do-it sections toward the back of the book. Says Githens: "Science is now everybody's business. We're not as lofty as the long-hair journals, but we're a lot more readable."

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