I learned from Gizmodo, my favorite gadgets blog, that Google has added complete archives of several magazines, including Popular Science (est. 1872) and Popular Mechanics (est. 1905), to its books search—complete with vintage advertisements and great illustrated articles.

There are lots of flying machines, real and imagined, to contemplate in these pages, including the “Whirling Leaf” helicopter concept shown on this September, 1922, Popular Science cover.

And, of course, you can learn the inside story of the inventor of the crystal detector (“With a nine-turn loop aerial, three feet across, using a crystal detector and tube amplification, I have enjoyed loudspeaker reception in Boston of radio-phone broadcasts from Schenectady, 160 miles away”) and the solution to the motorist’s biggest problem:

To owners of 9,500,000 autombiles in the United States the rapid depletion of our oil reserves is causing real concern. The following article, giving assurance of underground reservoirs of the precious liquid still to be tapped, and of shale mountains to be crushed and distilled as a last resort, may serve not merely to allay immediate alarm, but to stimulate greater care in conserving the diminishing supply of wealth from existing wells.

Tags: Flying.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Elsewhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.