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Scientific American

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Scientific American
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

U.S. monthly magazine interpreting scientific developments to lay readers. It was founded in 1845 as a newspaper describing new inventions. By 1853 its circulation had reached 30,000 and it was reporting on various sciences, such as astronomy and medicine, apart from inventions. In 1921 it became a monthly. From its founding it used woodcut illustrations, and it was one of the first papers to use halftone illustrations. Its articles — solidly based on scholarly research, well written, carefully edited, and accompanied by definitions of scientific terms and by illustrations — have made it the most highly regarded magazine of its genre.

For more information on Scientific American, visit Britannica.com.

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Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia: Scientific American
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Home > Library > Religion & Spirituality > Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia

In the summer of 1922, this New York journal, known for its outstanding presentation of scientific findings to the American lay public, decided to investigate the subject of psychical research. Contributions were invited, but as these proved to be rather contradictory, a plan was worked out for first-hand investigation, and the sum of $2,500 was promised for the demonstration of an objective psychic phenomenon before a committee of five.

The offer was to remain open from January 1923, when it was published in the Scientific American, until December 31, 1924. The committee consisted of William McDougall, a professor of psychology at Harvard; Daniel Frost Comstock, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then a retired inventor; Walter Franklin Prince, principal research officer of the American Society of Psychical Research; Here-ward Carrington, the well-known psychical investigator and author; and Harry Houdini, the stage magician and escapologist. J. Malcolm Bird, associate editor of the Scientific American, was assigned to the committee as a non-voting member to perform secretarial duties.

Psychics and mediums proved reluctant to appear before the committee, some objecting to its composition. In fourteen months, the committee had only three applicants. The verdict in each case was fraud, conscious or otherwise.

The offer of the Scientific American was enlarged in April 1924. It comprised the payment of the expenses of any highclass medium who would come forward, regardless of the verdict. No response came, but Bird succeeded in making arrangements with Mina Crandon, soon to become famous as "Margery," the wife of L. R. Crandon of Boston, to sit for investigation in Boston. In return for the change of scene, necessitated by L. R. Crandon's professional engagements, the doctor waived the Scientific American 's offer to pay expenses and himself undertook to pay the committee's expenses in Boston.

The "Margery" Sittings

The first séance was held on April 12. The committee witnessed gradual development of interesting phenomena and made good headway into the investigation by using scientific instruments. Final judgment might have been reached; however, friction, dissension, and distrust arose between the members.

One focus of tension was Houdini. He had established, at that time, a reputation in the unmasking of fraudulent mediums. In the end, possibly not without justification, he openly accused Bird with confederacy in producing the mediumistic phenomena. Other members of the committee had come to believe that Bird was at best highly incompetent.

Houdini obtained no direct proof against "Margery," yet after two sittings in July, he published a document attacking both the Crandons and Malcolm Bird. He began to give lectures in which he claimed to have infallibly demonstrated that the rest of the committee was duped.

Orson D. Munn, the publisher of the Scientific American, now stepped in and, noting that the finality of the exposure was in no way acknowledged by the committee itself, prevailed upon Houdini to go back for further sittings in August and to make an attempt to reach a final verdict. At that stage, since Carrington had pronounced the mediumship genuine, he withdrew from further sittings. McDougall was otherwise engaged, so Comstock, Houdini, and Prince remained on the scene.

Houdini constructed a supposedly "fraud-proof" wooden cage for the critical séance, but refused to sit with it in red light, demanded total darkness, and categorically denied the request of his colleagues for its examination. The committee yielded to Houdini but some suspicion was present. In any case, after a few minutes of the séance the entire top of the cage was found open and Houdini at once stated that anybody sitting in it could throw it open with her shoulders. It appeared, therefore, that the problem at this point was Houdini's design. This incident was followed with confrontations between Houdini and "Margery's" spirit control "Walter," who demanded to know how much Houdini was getting for stopping phenomena. "Walter" advised Comstock to take the bell box out into white light and examine it. Sure enough, a rubber eraser, off the end of a pencil, was found tucked down into the angle between the contact boards, necessitating four times the usual pressure to ring the bell.

At the next séance, when the top of the cage was properly secured, Houdini, on some pretext, put his arm in through the porthole at the last minute. "Walter" thereupon denounced Houdini and accused him of putting a ruler in the cage under the cushion on which "Margery's" feet rested. The accusation was proved. A two-foot jointed ruler, of the sort used by carpenters, folded into four sections, was found at the designated spot. After this, Houdini was delivered an ultimatum for handing over the cage to the committee. Houdini refused to comply, packed the cage up, and carted it away.

The attitude of the rest of the committee towards the mediumship of "Margery" was also open to criticism. Prince sat ten times, Comstock 56 times, McDougall 22 times; none of them uncovered any fraud, yet they came increasingly to agree that the phenomena were not genuine.

Malcolm Bird's Role

The next crisis came with Malcolm Bird's unofficial (and very favorable) account of the investigation in the Scientific American. In the press reproductions, the distinction between the Scientific American and the committee was lost; headlines shrieked across the country that "Margery" was about to win the prize. Prince insisted that the Scientific American articles be stopped until the committee was through with the case and threatened resignation. Houdini sided with him. The articles were discontinued, and Bird was pressured to resign from further association with the committee.

When the August séances were over and still no verdict had been reached, the Scientific American insisted on its rights and demanded a statement from the committee or from its individual members. These statements were published in November 1924. Carrington pronounced the mediumship genuine and so proved, Houdini pronounced it fraudulent and so proved. Comstock said he found it interesting and wanted to see more of it. Prince disclaimed to have seen enough. McDougall could not be reached, but later sided with Comstock. After this, Prince and McDougall attended some more séances. Prince witnessed bell ringing in perfect daylight with the bell box in his lap; McDougall saw it ringing while being carried about the room, yet they still refused to commit themselves. Thus ended the investigation of the committee of the Scientific American.

In April 1925, O. D. Munn announced: "The famous Margery case is over so far as the Scientific American investigation is concerned." The question of the "Margery" mediumship was now transferred from the Scientific American fiasco to the ASPR. Bird left the editorial board of the Scientific American and became a staff member of the ASPR. As a result the "Margery" question became central to the organization. Prince, who considered Bird incompetent, resigned, and, with others who had come to doubt Crandon's abilities, he founded the Boston Society for Psychical Research. He was joined by William MacDougall, Gardner Murphy and Elwood Worcester. Bird's book on "Margery" appeared in 1925.

The affair seemed to have reached a stalemate: the ASPR basically backed "Margery," and the Boston SPR opposed her. Then Bird submitted a confidential report to the ASPR board in which he revealed that, contrary to his own book, he was aware that at least some of the phenomena produced by Margery were produced in a mundane manner and that he had been approached to become the Crandons' accomplice. Bird soon resigned and dropped out of sight.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Bird, Malcolm. Margery the Medium. New York: Maynard,1925.

Tietze, Thomas R. Margery. New York: Harper and Row,1973.

Wikipedia: Scientific American
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Scientific American
A magazine cover depicting a photorealistic view of the Earth, inserted into a melted ice cube, with the magazines masthead at top and a headline between the masthead and the Earth reading "Did Humans Stop an ICE AGE?" Beneath the headline in smaller type os tje subheading "8,000 years of global warming"
March 2005 cover of Scientific American
Categories Popular science
Frequency Monthly
Total circulation
(2008)		 732,617 (worldwide average)
First issue August 28, 1845
Company Holtzbrinck/Nature Publishing Group
Country USA
Language English
Website http://www.scientificamerican.com/
ISSN 0036-8733

Scientific American (informally abbreviated SciAm) is a popular science periodical

Contents

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 Orson Desaix Munn III, grandson of the Orson I, 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.[1]

Donald Miller died in December, 1998,[2] Gerard Piel in September 2004 and Dennis Flanagan in January 2005. Mariette DiChristina is the current editor-in-chief, after John Rennie stepped down in June 2009.[1]

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.

First issue

Search 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.

Editors

Scientific American Special Navy Supplement (1898)

Special issues

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.

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.

Columns

Notable features have included:

Television

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

Controversies

 This article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) may mean the article does not present a neutral point of view of the subject. It may be better to integrate the material in those sections into the article as a whole. (August 2009)

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."[5] 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."[6]

The May 2007 issue featured a column by Michael Shermer calling for a United States pullout from the Iraq War.[7] In response, Wall Street Journal online columnist James Taranto jokingly called Scientific American "a liberal political magazine".[8]

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.

The publisher was criticized with it notified collegiate libraries that subscribe to the journal that yearly subscription prices would increase by nearly 500% for print and 50% for online access to $1500 yearly.[9]

See also

References

Specific references:

  1. ^ 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 2009-04-26. 
  2. ^ "Donald H. Miller". New York Times. December 27, 1998. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E4D9173FF934A15751C1A96E958260. "Miller-Donald H., Jr. Vice President and General Manager of the magazine Scientific American for 32 years until his retirement in 1979. Died on December 22, at home in Chappaqua, NY. He was 84. Survived by his wife of 50 years, Claire; children Linda Itkin, Geoff Kaufman, Sheila Miller Bernson, Bruce Miller, Meredith Davis, and Donald H. Miller, M.D; nine grandchildren and one greatgrandchild; and brother Douglas H. Miller. Memorial service will be held on Saturday, January 30, at 2 PM at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Westchester in Mount Kisco, NY. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Hospice Care in Westchester, 100 So. Bedford Road, Mount Kisco, NY 10549." 
  3. ^ "A Century of Progress". Time (magazine). January 1, 1945. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,791839,00.html. Retrieved 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." 
  4. ^ "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 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." 
  5. ^ Who Let the Dogs Out at Scientific American?, Patrick J. Michaels, January 17, 2002
  6. ^ Green with Ideology, Ronald Bailey, Reason, May 2002
  7. ^ Bush's Mistake and Kennedy's Error, Michael Shermer, Scientific American, May 2007
  8. ^ Sunk or Bunk?, James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, May 18, 2007
  9. ^ Howard, Jennifer (October 13, 2009). "College Library Directors Protest Huge Jump in 'Scientific American' Price". Chronical of Higher Eduction. http://chronicle.com/article/College-Library-Directors/48794/. Retrieved 2009-10-14. 

General references:

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

External links

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This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Scientific American".  Read more