CDO World

At the turn of the century, vehicles were of particular interest, and in 1899, a special issue was devoted exclusively to bicycles and automobiles. The editors took great delight in reporting new speed records, including a land speed record of a mile in 39.4 seconds set in 1904 by Henry Ford while driving across the ice of Lake St. Clair, Michigan.

By this time, the magazine had established its hallmark for pinpointing emerging trends before news of them reached the general population. Articles on Marconi's experiments appeared two decades before the advent of radio. Scientific American published photographs of the Wright Brothers' plane nearly two years before the successful Kitty Hawk flight. Robert Goddard contributed an article in 1921 defending and explaining his work on developing a rocket capable of reaching "interplanetary distances." In 1927 Scientific American reported on a practical demonstration of television that sent the voice and moving image of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover over telephone wires from Washington, D.C., to New York.

In 1948 Gerard Piel, Dennis Flanagan and Donald Miller purchased Scientific American from Munn & Company and founded Scientific American, Inc. In their quest to increase the immediacy, timeliness and authority of the magazine, they insisted that the majority of the articles be written by the people who actually did the work described - a unique distinction among consumer magazines that still applies.

With ahead-of-the-curve reporting, Scientific American continued to cover groundbreaking events in science and technology. An article prophetically entitled "Computers in Business" was published in 1954. From the successful launch of Telstar to a single-topic issue that identified "Key Technologies for the 21st Century," the magazine has alerted its audience to the expanding possibilities of communications. Medical coverage included Jonas Salk writing on the development of his polio vaccine, Robert Jarvik detailing the creation of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, and single-topic issues on AIDS and the immune system. New technologies that revolutionized the automobile industry were explored.

Scientific American, the longest continuously published magazine in the U.S., has been bringing its readers unique insights about developments in science and technology for more than 170 years.

In 1845, Rufus Porter founded the publication as a weekly broadsheet subtitled "The Advocate of Industry and Enterprise, and Journal of Mechanical and Other Improvements." A restless inventor, Porter soon turned to other ventures, and after 10 months sold Scientific American - for the sum of $8