Scientific American

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Scientific American  
March 2005 cover of Scientific American
Abbreviated title Sci Am
Discipline Interdisciplinary
Language English
Publication details
Publisher Scientific American, Inc. (USA)
Publication history 1845 to present
Indexing
ISSN 0036-8733
Links

Scientific American (informally abbreviated to SciAm) is a popular science magazine, one of the oldest and most prestigious, published (first weekly and later monthly) since August 28, 1845, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. It brings articles about new and innovative research to the amateur and lay audience.

Scientific American had a monthly circulation of roughly 555,000 in the United States and 90,000 internationally as of December 2005.[1] It is not a refereed scientific journal, such as Nature; rather, it is a forum where scientific theories and discoveries are explained to a broader audience. In the past scientists interested in fields outside their own areas of expertise made up the magazine's target audience. Now, however, the publication is aimed at educated general readers who are interested in scientific issues. The magazine American Scientist covers similar ground but at a level more suitable for the professional science audience, similar to the older style of Scientific American.

Contents

[edit] History

Scientific American was founded by Rufus M. Porter, who grew up in Bridgton, Maine, as a single-page newsletter. Throughout its early years much emphasis was placed on reports of what was going on at the U.S. Patent Office. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including perpetual motion machines, an 1849 device for buoying vessels by Abraham Lincoln, and the universal joint which now finds place in nearly every automobile manufactured. Current issues feature a "this date in history" section, featuring excerpts from articles originally published 50, 100, and 150 years earlier; topics include humorous incidents, wrong-headed theories, and noteworthy advances in the history of science and technology.

Porter sold the newsletter in 1846 to Alfred Ely Beach and Orson Desaix Munn I, and until 1948 it remained owned by Munn & Company. Under the second Orson Desaix Munn III, grandson of the first, it had evolved into something of a "workbench" publication, similar to the 20th century incarnation of Popular Science. In the years after World War II, the magazine was dying. Three partners who were planning on starting a new popular science magazine, to be called The Sciences, instead purchased the assets of the old Scientific American and put its name on the designs they had created for their new magazine. Thus the partners -- publisher Gerard Piel, editor Dennis Flanagan, and general manager Donald H. Miller, Jr. -- created essentially a new magazine, the Scientific American magazine of the second half of the twentieth century. Miller retired in 1979, Flanagan and Piel in 1984, when Gerard Piel's son Jonathan became president and editor; circulation had grown fifteenfold since 1948. In 1986 it was sold to the Holtzbrinck group of Germany, who have owned it since. In the fall of 2008, Scientific American was put under the control of Nature Publishing Group, a division of Holtzbrinck.[2]

Donald Miller died in December, 1998,[3] Gerard Piel in September 2004 and Dennis Flanagan in January 2005. John Rennie is the current editor-in-chief, although he plans to step down in June 2009.[2]

[edit] International Editions

Scientific American published its first foreign edition in 1890, the Spanish-language "La America Cientifica." Publication was suspended in 1905, and another 63 years would pass before another foreign-language edition appeared: In 1968, an Italian edition, Le Scienze, was launched, and a Japanese edition, Nikkei Science(日経サイエンス), followed three years later. Kexue(科学，“Science” in Chinese), a simplified Chinese edition launched in 1979, was the first Western magazine published in the People's Republic of China. Later in 2001, a newer edition, Global Science(环球科学), was published instead of Kexue, which shut down due to financial problems.

Today, Scientific American publishes 18 foreign-language editions around the globe: Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.

From 1902 to 1911, Scientific American supervised the publication of the Encyclopedia Americana, which during some of that period was known as The Americana.

[edit] First issue

Wikisource
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Cover of Scientific American September 1848 issue.

It originally styled itself "The Advocate of Industry and Enterprise" and "Journal of Mechanical and other Improvements". On the front page of the first issue was the engraving of "Improved Rail-Road Cars". The masthead had a commentary as follows:

Scientific American published every Thursday morning at No. 11 Spruce Street, New York, No. 16 State Street, Boston, and No. 2l Arcade Philadelphia, (The principal office being in New York) by Rufus Porter. Each number will be furnished with from two to five original Engravings, many of them elegant, and illustrative of New Inventions, Scientific Principles, and Curious Works; and will contain, in high addition to the most interesting news of passing events, general notices of progress of Mechanical and other Scientific Improvements; American and Foreign. Improvements and Inventions; Catalogues of American Patents; Scientific Essays, illustrative of the principles of the sciences of Mechanics, Chemistry, and Architecture: useful information and instruction in various Arts and Trades; Curious Philosophical Experiments; Miscellaneous Intelligence, Music and Poetry. This paper is especially entitled to the patronage of Mechanics and Manufactures, being the only paper in America, devoted to the interest of those classes; but is particularly useful to farmers, as it will not only appraise them of improvements in agriculture implements, But instruct them in various mechanical trades, and guard them against impositions As a family newspaper, it will convey more useful intelligence to children and young people, than five times its cost in school instruction. Another important argument in favor of this paper, is that it will be worth two dollars at the end of the year when the volume is complete, (Old volumes of the New York Mechanic, being now worth double the original cost, in cash.) Terms: The "Scientific American" will be furnished to subscribers at $2.00 per annum, - one dollar in advance, and the balance in six months. Five copies will be sent to one address six months for four dollars in advance. Any person procuring two or more subscribers, will be entitled to a commission of 25 cents each.

The commentary under the illustration gives the flavor of its style at the time:

There is, perhaps no mechanical subject, in which improvement has advanced so rapidly, within the last ten years, as that of railroad passenger cars. Let any person contrast the awkward and uncouth cars of '35 with the superbly splendid long cars now running on several of the eastern roads, and he will find it difficult to convey to a third party, a correct idea of the vast extent of improvement. Some of the most elegant cars of this class, and which are of a capacity to accommodate from sixty to eighty passengers, and run with a steadiness hardly equalled by a steamboat in still water, are manufactured by Davenport & Bridges, at their establishment in Cambridgeport, Mass. The manufacturers have recently introduced a variety of excellent improvements in the construction of trucks, springs, and connections, which are calculated to avoid atmospheric resistance, secure safety and convenience, and contribute ease and comfort to passengers, while flying at the rate of 30 or 40 miles per hour."

Also in the first issue is commentary on Signor Muzio Muzzi's proposed device for aerial navigation.

[edit] Editors

Scientific American Special Navy Supplement (1898)

[edit] Special issues

[edit] Scientific American 50 award

The Scientific American 50 award was started in 2002 to recognise contributions to science and technology during the magazine's previous year. The magazine's 50 awards cover many categories including agriculture, communications, defence, environment, and medical diagnostics. The complete list of each year's winners appear in the December issue of the magazine, as well as on the magazine's web site.

[edit] Website

In March 1996 Scientific American launched its own website that includes articles from current and past issues, online-only features, daily news, weird science, special reports, trivia, "Scidoku" and more.

[edit] Columns

Notable features have included:

[edit] Television

Scientific American also produced a TV program on PBS called Scientific American Frontiers.

[edit] Controversies

In its January 2002 issue, Scientific American published a series of criticisms of the Bjorn Lomborg book "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Cato Institute fellow Patrick J. Michaels said the attacks came because the book "threatens billions of taxpayer dollars that go into the global change kitty every year."[6] Journalist Ronald Bailey called the criticism "disturbing" and "dishonest", writing, "The subhead of the review section, 'Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist,' gives the show away: Religious and political views need to defend themselves against criticism, but science is supposed to be a process for determining the facts."[7]

The May 2007 issue featured a column by Michael Shermer calling for a United States pullout from the Iraq War.[8] In response, Wall Street Journal online columnist James Taranto jokingly called Scientific American "a liberal political magazine".[9]

Though not a controversy on a scientific topic, in May 1988 science writer Forrest Mims was a candidate to take over The Amateur Scientist column, which needed a new editor. He was asked to write some sample columns, which he did in 1990. Mims was not offered the position, due, he alleged, to his creationist views. Various newspapers, starting with the Houston Chronicle which broke the story and later The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times, published articles critical of the magazine for rejecting the author, not on science but on his personal religious views.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Print Media Kit circulation statistics". ScientificAmerican.com. http://www.sciam.com/mediakit/print/index.cfm?section=circulation. Retrieved on 2006-04-29. 
  2. ^ a b Fell, Jason. "Scientific American Editor, President to Step Down; 5 Percent of Staff Cut". FOLIO. http://www.foliomag.com/2009/scientific-american-editor-president-step-down-5-percent-staff-cut. Retrieved on 2009-04-26. 
  3. ^ "Paid Notice: Deaths - MILLER, DONALD H.". New York Times. December 27 1998. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E4D9173FF934A15751C1A96E958260. 
  4. ^ "A Century of Progress". Time (magazine). January 1, 1945. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,791839,00.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-15. "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 café society." 
  5. ^ "Dennis Flanagan, 85, Editor of Scientific American for 37 Years". New York Times. January 17, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/obituaries/17flanagan_obit.html. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. "Dennis Flanagan, who as editor of Scientific American magazine helped foster science writing for the general reader, died at his home in Manhattan on Friday. He was 85. The cause of death was prostate cancer, according to his wife, Barbara Williams Flanagan. Mr. Flanagan, who worked at Scientific American for more than three decades beginning in 1947, teamed editors directly with working scientists, publishing pieces by leading figures like Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling and J. Robert Oppenheimer." 
  6. ^ Who Let the Dogs Out at Scientific American?, Patrick J. Michaels, January 17, 2002
  7. ^ Green with Ideology, Ronald Bailey, Reason, May 2002
  8. ^ Bush's Mistake and Kennedy's Error, Michael Shermer, Scientific American, May 2007
  9. ^ Sunk or Bunk?, James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, May 18, 2007

[edit] References

  • Lewenstein, Bruce V. 1989. Magazine Publishing and Popular Science After World War II. American Journalism 6 (4):218-234.

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Scientific American

[edit] Video clips

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