Those Were the Days

Just after the turn of the century, a Swiss patent-office clerk published an abstruse theory of relativity. The world of science and invention was, for the moment, unmoved. Those were the days when Henry Ford was still a struggling manufacturer gambling on the future of a mechanical curiosity. The Wright brothers were coaxing their first plane into brief and tentative flights over the sand dunes at Kitty Hawk. A Frenchman was prepared to turn out an automatic hat-tipper for use with the narrow-brimmed derbies of the period. And a Detroit doctor, after diligent study, had come to the horrified conclusion that before long the earth would be populated with lunatics.

Most of these fads and fancies were duly reported by Popular Mechanics, a lusty new magazine, whose editors ignored Einstein and took a dim view of the horseless carriage ("Not that the time will ever come when ... horses [will] entirely disappear from boulevard and town . . ."). They had more faith in lighter-than-air craft than they had in airplanes. They recorded the invention of perpetual motion machines and the impact of the telephone on the Turkish harem.

Seven Wonders. In Fifty Years of Popular Mechanics (Simon & Schuster, $5), the present editors of the magazine (circ. 1,169,645) cock an uncritical eye at a half-century of publication, which reflects their nostalgic concern for the changing gadgetry of the years. The editors may have been slow to spot the Wright brothers, but by 1909 one of the first of a long line of build-it-yourself articles had Popular Mechanics readers constructing their own "gliding machine." Three years later, after polling 1,000 scientists, the magazine listed the Seven Wonders of the Modern World: "wireless, telephone, aeroplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins, spectrum analysis, X ray." In 1915, scientific concern over the vulnerability of the Lusitania was balanced by illustrations of such bright little items as a treadmill for figure-conscious opera stars.

After the end of World War I, the airplane and the automobile had earned undisputed prominence in the pages of the magazine. Hobbyists were being taught how to build their own radios. The progress of motion pictures, the first hints of television were both discussed. As early as 1941, amateur scientists, who knew about Einstein by now, could marvel at prophecies of fantastic power hidden in the atomic heart of uranium 235.

Atomic Progress. Then the magazine was filled with pictures of warships again. Soon the editors were speculating about German jet fighters. Later they were explaining the operation of the "fantastic stratosphere rocket," the German V2. For four years there was no more mention of atomic energy.

Looking back on their 50 years of publishing, the editors have found a curious kind of repetition that sometimes passes for progress. The propeller-equipped parachute of 1918 seems a not-too-distant cousin of the experimental "Hoppicopter" of today. In 1907 they were teaching the home carpenter how to build an underground clubhouse. Today the structure is more elaborate and has been renamed. The last item in the book is a basement A-bomb shelter for private homes.

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