Here’s a heads-up for anyone of a geeky bent – Wired reports that Popular Science has scanned nearly 140 years of its archived back issues and put them up for viewing on the intertubes, complete with all images and the original period advertising material. For free.
You can’t go directly to an issue to browse, but once you have arrived somewhere by search, there are no restrictions on scrolling around. You’ll also find a properly hyperlinked table of contents in each magazine. The early years are a little dry: I browsed an issue from 1902, and it made the average math textbook look like a Dan Brown novel (only better paced), so I’d recommend starting in the optimistic, tech-loving 1950s.
Of peripheral interest is the fact that PopSci has done this in partnership with Google Books…
The Coming Convergence by Stanley Schmidt, PhD