This Month in the Archives

August 19, 2020

This Month in the Archives

View all Scientific American publications.

The heat is on (in the Northern Hemisphere) but we’re stuck inside (it feels like pretty much everywhere). Luckily we have some great reading for you: National Radio Day is August 20, when we honor this device that still finds a large space in the digital ecosystem. We can skip the “murder hornets” and salute the honeybee, which pollinates $15 billion in crops every year. Finally, we should look at space travel, because at Scientific American, we can.

And for our 175th anniversary year, more gems from Scientific American’s history can be found at Artifacts from the Archive.

I hope you enjoy the journey!
Dan Schlenoff, Editor of “50, 100 & 150 Years Ago”

Radio

By May 1924 radio broadcasting had become wildly popular.

April 1899:

“Telegraphy ... without connecting wires,” as explained by Guglielmo Marconi, saw radio as a way to communicate without telegraph lines.

May 1924:

Radio transmission became a commercial success when audio programs began regular broadcast: news, music, sports, entertainment of all sorts.

March 2009:

The world’s tiniest radio receiver: a single nanoscopic tube. Yes, it has applications.

Bees, Honey and Other

The stout little digger bee is an excellent pollinator and not aggressive.

May 1908:

“Organized anarchy”—this author on honeybee hierarchy seems utterly baffled. (Hint: bee colonies are a superorganism.)

July 1978:

Neurobiologists take a look at how tiny bee brains are so good at learning and remembering where to find good pollen or nectar.

February 1984:

Many bee species don’t live in colonies or hives. These solitary bees, though, are still vital pollinators.

Access 175 Years of Scientific Knowledge

Space Travel

Saturn, from the surface of Titan, 1915. A great image, all from imagination!

March 1915:

Saturn, the most interesting planet in the solar system—and that was even before we visited (well, our remote-controlled devices did).

March 2000:

A plan to get astronauts to Mars. Robots are all very well, but we humans are a conceited species and prefer to tromp around on alien planets ourselves.

March 2010:

The Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005. We’re still sifting through the science that came from that.

Current Issue: August 2020