A Trafficker in Climaxes

Popular Science made their previous publications available on the net recently. From their website:

We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

It’s a gem! You can browse thousands of pages and find all sorts of interesting articles and information about anything and everything. Naturally though, some of the first things I searched for were old articles on robots, time travel and flying cars. The relevant results were articles published from 2000 onwards but I wasn’t interested in any of them. I wanted more ‘vintage’ information and the prototypes that scientists have invented at least 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, the search feature was limited and an advanced option that will let you filter results that were published earlier than..say, 1970′s would be very helpful. Results could be so much more interesting (not that they aren’t interesting already) heh.

Anyway, here are pages I snipped out of the February 1934 edition. It’s the oldest publication I saw when I was searching for flying cars. Notice the fancy (and stiff) typography, the ads (encyclopedia! weight gain products!), and the then-revolutionary technological advancements (bulb used as camera flash and f6.3 is a fast lens!, paper tape voice recorder!).

To find articles of your topics of interest, click here. If you’re a sucker for these things, prepare for a day or two of unproductivity.