End Of An Era: Popular Science Shutters Magazine

End Of An Era: Popular Science Shutters Magazine

Time Stamp: November 30, 2023 1:00 PM
Source Node: 2986626

Just three years after the iconic magazine abandoned its print version and went all-digital, Popular Science is now halting its subscription service entirely. The brand itself will live on — their site will still run tech stories and news articles, and they have two podcasts that will keep getting new episodes — but no more quarterly releases. While you can’t complain too much about a 151 year run, it’s still sad to see what was once such an influential publication slowly become just another cog in the content mill.

Started as a monthly magazine all the way back in 1872, Popular Science offered a hopeful vision of what was over the horizon. It didn’t present a fanciful version of what the next 100 years would look like, but rather, tried to read the tea leaves of cutting edge technology to offer a glimpse of what the next decade or so might hold. Flip through a few issues from the 1950s and 60s, and you won’t see pulpy stories about humanity conquering the stars or building a time machine. Instead the editors got readers ready for a day when they’d drive cars with warbird-derived turbochargers, and enjoy more powerful tools once transistor technology allowed for widespread use of small brushless motors. It wasn’t just armchair engineering either, issues would often include articles written by the engineers and researchers that were on the front lines.

But Popular Science wasn’t just about the future, it also provided plenty of contemporary content for those who liked to toy with technology at home. You could find articles about building your own test equipment, or setting up your own workshop. From woodworking to homebrew Geiger counters, there was a little something for everyone.

This focus on the hobbyist wasn’t without it’s downside. For the last decade or two, the magazine seemed to have more advertisements trying to sell the reader on the latest wiz-bang gadgetry than it did articles. Then again, there are precious few printed publications that didn’t suffer that particular fate.

Much like when MAKE went through its troubles back in 2019, we have to admit there’s a bit of irony at work here. The reality is, sites like the one your reading right now are the reason tech magazines have become a dying breed. But even if the age of print is coming to a close, we still have great respect for the seminal publications that came before the Internet took over our lives.

Surely many of the people in this community were inspired to pick up their first soldering iron by something they saw in a magazine like Popular Science, Byte, Popular Electronics, or Hands-On Electronics. We can only hope to do their legacy justice for the next generation.

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