At the same time as I rediscovered this blog three months ago, I bought myself a subscription to Scientific American (Sci Am). Many years ago I remember picking up Scientific American magazines in waiting rooms – doctor’s waiting rooms, lawyers’ waiting rooms, and even in the few coffee and tea rooms that actually encouraged their customers to relax and read while waiting for their lunch to arrive. I never had a subscription of my own however. Getting a subscription to an overseas’ publication from local shops was an iffy proposition. Apart from being very expensive, the magazines took weeks, sometimes months, to arrive at the shops and often didn’t turn up at all. And it was no better getting a mail subscription directly from the publisher. It could take one to two months to arrive in the letterbox. The joys of living in a small island country thousands of kilometres from anywhere!

Times have changed however. It is no longer necessary to wait for months for a magazine to be delivered to a local book store or to my letterbox, all I need is an annual digital subscription and I immediately have a pdf file of the entire magazine. I even have download access to the last four years of Scientific American issues. It sounds a little silly I know but I felt as if I had discovered an information treasure chest. That feeling returned tenfold when I bought myself a Scientific American monthly unlimited subscription. I now have download access to every single Scientific American there has ever been.

The first issue came out 28 August 1845, forty three years earlier than the first National Geographic – another magazine I now have a subscription for. According to Rufus Porter, who I assume was the editor then, Scientific American was a ‘family newspaper’ that ‘…will confer more useful intelligence to children and young people, than five times its cost in school instruction.’ A subscription cost $2 (USD) per year, half paid in advance and the other half in six months.

Did you know that in 1845, the Merrimack Company in Lowell, Massachusetts employed 1250 women in their textile mill, Apparently their average earnings exceeded $2 a week and that was after their board payments were removed from their pay packets. So, for those young women an annual subscription to Scientific American would have cost them a week’s wages (minus board). But wait. The average working man in the mill received 85 cents a day over and above their board. Given that the American working week in 1845 was at least 6 days (and the working day was between 10 and 12 hours long) that means that the men were getting about $5 dollars a week over and above their board. I suspect more men bought the magazine than women. Oh yes and the women (but not the men apparently) were fired if they were found guilty of ‘licentious conduct’ but less than 1% of the women lost their jobs for that reason. I wonder if that was because they were a particularly chaste lot or if they were just too smart to be caught.

Did you also know that the most up-to-date railroad car, also manufactured in Massachusetts, could hold up to 80 passengers and travel between 30 and 40 miles per hour? And then of course there was the visit of the first ocean-going iron-clad steamship, SS Great Britain, which was docked at New York at the time the first edition of Sci Am came out. She was a real crowd-pleaser and a huge attraction for the 2 weeks that she was in New York.

Imagine what it would be like to be able to travel back to August 28 1845 and see some of these things for myself…

…The room gradually darkens and eerie music starts playing…