Scientific American (informally abbreviated SciAm) is a popular science Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many formats, which can include books, television magazine.

History

Scientific American was founded by inventor and publisher Rufus M. Porter For the American football player see Rufus Porter . For the American poet see Rufus L. Porter in 1845 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 The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including perpetual motion Perpetual motion would occur in a device or system if a motion, once started, were to continue indefinitely. The laws of thermodynamics demonstrate that perpetual motion devices cannot be created machines, an 1849 device for buoying vessels by Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Before his election in 1860 as the first Republican president, Lincoln had been a country, and the universal joint A universal joint, U joint, Cardan joint, Hardy-Spicer joint, or Hooke's joint is a joint in a rigid rod that allows the rod to 'bend' in any direction, and is commonly used in shafts that transmit rotary motion. It consists of a pair of hinges located close together, oriented at 90° to each other, connected by a cross shaft which now finds place in nearly every automobile An automobile, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the 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 to Alfred Ely Beach Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, publisher and patent lawyer and Orson Desaix Munn I He had formed The Munn & Company with Salem H. Wales and Alfred Ely Beach as editor. He bought the six-month-old Scientific American magazine from Rufus Porter. Hos children were Orson Desaix Munn II, and Louisine Elder Munn. He died on 28 February 1907 a mere 10 months after founding it. 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 Popular Science is an American monthly magazine founded in 1872 carrying articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the ASME awards for its journalistic excellence in both 2003 and 2004 (for Best Magazine Section). PopSci has been translated into over 30 languages and goes.

In the years after World War II, the magazine was in steep decline. In 1948, 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 Dennis Flanagan was an editor of Scientific American starting in 1947, and general manager Donald H. Miller, Jr. -- created essentially a new magazine. 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 Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike group of Germany, who have owned it since.

In the fall of 2008, Scientific American was put under the control of Nature Publishing Group Nature Publishing Group is an international publishing company that publishes scientific journals. It is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, which in turn is owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. NPG's flagship title is Nature, a weekly multidisciplinary journal first published in 1869. Other publications include Nature, the, 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 Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, ( Arabic pronunciation ) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million, Brazilian Portuguese Portuguese ( português or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated from a fusion of the dialect spoken in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal with closely related dialects spoken in territories to the south which had not yet been reconquered by the Christians to the Arabs by the time Portugal was born as a Christian kingdom, Traditional Chinese Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of the two standard sets of printed Chinese characters, the other being simplified Chinese characters. The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the 5th century The retronym, Simplified Chinese Simplified Chinese Characters are one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China (Mainland China) has promoted them for use in printing in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore, Czech Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian until the late 19th century in English. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian, Dutch Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language and over 5 million people as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, with smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other, French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in, German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers, Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of, Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s, Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it, Japanese Japanese (日本語?, [nihoŋɡo] ) is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none of them has gained unanimous acceptance. Japanese is an agglutinative, Korean Korean is the official language of Korea, both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century a national writing system was commissioned by Sejong the Great, the system being currently called Hangul. Prior, Lithuanian Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they are not mutually intelligible. It is written in an, Polish Polish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner throughout most of Poland, Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə] ("the Romanian language") or româneşte (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania,, Russian Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th, and Spanish Countries where Spanish has official status. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population.

From 1902 to 1911, Scientific American supervised the publication of the Encyclopedia Americana Grolier's Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier Inc. in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic Inc, which during some of that period was known as The Americana.

First 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

• Rufus M. Porter For the American football player see Rufus Porter . For the American poet see Rufus L. Porter (1792-1884), first
• Orson Desaix Munn I He had formed The Munn & Company with Salem H. Wales and Alfred Ely Beach as editor. He bought the six-month-old Scientific American magazine from Rufus Porter. Hos children were Orson Desaix Munn II, and Louisine Elder Munn. He died on 28 February 1907, third^[3]
• Dennis Flanagan Dennis Flanagan was an editor of Scientific American starting in 1947 (1919–2005) was the editor starting in 1947. ^[4]
• Jonathan Piel He became the editor of Scientific American in June 1984 and left the magazine in August 1994. Following the tradition established by Gerard Piel and Dennis Flanagan he managed a staff of editors, artists, and writers who express the development of science in such fields as physics, astrophysics, cosmology, evolution, biology, archeology,, June, 1984 through August, 1994
• John Rennie, seventh editor in chief, 1994-2009
• Mariette DiChristina, eighth editor in chief, appointed December 2009

Special issues

• Communications, Computers, and Networks The Scientific American special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Network, is a special issue of Scientific American dedicated to articles concerning impending changes to the internet in the period prior to the expansion and mainstreaming of the world wide web via Mosaic and Netscape (web browser). This issue contained essays by a number of - September 1991

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:

• Martin Gardner Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, the's Mathematical Games column
• Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, literary translation, artistic creation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. He is best known for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, first published in 1979, for which he was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for's Metamagical Themas
• The Amateur Scientist column
• A.K. Dewdney Alexander Keewatin Dewdney is a Canadian mathematician, computer scientist and philosopher who has written a number of books on the future and implications of modern computing. He has also written one work of fiction, The Planiverse. Dewdney lives in London, Ontario, Canada where he holds the position of Professor Emeritus of the University of's Computer Recreations column
• Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members's Skeptic column

Television

Scientific American also produced a TV program on PBS The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting[citation needed]. Its headquarters are in Arlington, Virginia called Scientific American Frontiers Scientific American Frontiers was an American television program primarily focused on informing the public about new technologies and discoveries in science and medicine. It was a companion program to the Scientific American magazine. The show was produced for PBS in the U.S. by The Chedd-Angier Production Company, Watertown, Massachusetts , and.

Controversies

In its January 2002 issue, Scientific American published a series of criticisms of the Bjorn Lomborg Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author, academic, and environmental writer. He is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and a former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book The Skeptical book The Skeptical Environmentalist The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World is a controversial book by Danish environmentalist author Bjørn Lomborg, which argues that claims on overpopulation, declining energy resources, deforestation, species loss, water shortages, certain aspects of global warming, and a variety of other global environmental issues. Cato Institute The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded by Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the second largest privately held company by revenue in the United States, together with Edward H. Crane and Murray Rothbard in 1977 fellow Patrick J. Michaels Patrick J. Michaels is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Professor of Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia where he worked from 1980-2007. He is a former state climatologist for Virginia, a position he was appointed to in 1980 and resigned from in 2007 amid uncertainty over whether he still officially retained 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 Ronald Bailey is the science editor for Reason magazine. He was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in Washington County, Virginia, and attended the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.A. in philosophy and economics in 1976. He attended the University of Virginia School of Law for three semesters 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 Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members 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]

The publisher was criticized when 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

• Albert Graham Ingalls, former editor and author of an amateur astronomy column
• Amos Root
• New Scientist
• Scientific American Mind
• Discover (magazine)
• American Scientist, which covers similar ground but at a level more suitable for the professional science audience^{[citation needed]}

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. ^ Santora, Marc (January 17, 2005). "Dennis Flanagan, 85, Editor of Scientific American for 37 Years". New York Times. 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

• Online edition of Scientific American with partially free access to the current issue
• Scientific American channel at YouTube
• Online archive (not free) of the issues from 1993 to the present
• Online archive of the issues before 1930, with indices
• Online archive of Scientific American between 1846 and 1869, from Cornell University
• Online archive of the covers of more than a thousand issues

Categories: Publications established in 1845 | Science and technology magazines | Companies based in New York City | American magazines | Monthly magazines | Scientific American

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