Happy Brithday Scientific American -- The magazine

Aug. 28, 1845: Scientific American, the Magazine for the Rest of Us

By Tony Long

The Scientific American logo has changed some from this rendering, circa 1869.

1845: Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, makes its debut.

Founded by Rufus Porter, a prolific inventor as well as a pretty fair painter and the scion of a wealthy New England family, was originally printed as a single-page newsletter with a demonstrated liking for news coming out of the U.S. Patent Office.

The first edition focused on the improving the quality of the American railroad passenger car . It included this passage to whet the appetite of potential travelers:

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 the 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 equaled by a steamboat in still water, are manufactured by Davenport & Bridges, at their establishment in Cambridgeport, Mass.

Today, Scientific American enjoys a solid reputation despite its broad target audience. While peer-reviewed journals like Science and Nature circulate widely in the professional scientific community, Scientific American's typical reader is a card-carrying (if educated) member of the general public.

Now owned by German-based publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, Scientific American publishes 15 foreign language editions, with a worldwide circulation of more than one million. The magazine's has been online since 1996.

(Source: Wikipedia)