Science Fiction And Fact
March 7th, 2010 by ComputerBob
When I was a kid, I bought over 50 used, hardcover Tom Swift, Jr. and Hardy Boys books at my church’s annual rummage sale. If I remember correctly, they only cost me five or ten cents apiece.
I spent many hours nestled up in the branches of a crabapple tree — and many more hours sitting under a pyramid of covers in bed, with a flashlight, late at night — reading those enthralling adventures.
The Hardy Boys mysteries honed my thinking skills, while Tom Swift, Jr.’s space adventures taught me to love the promise of future technologies.
A few years later, I voraciously read each new issue of the monthly magazine, Popular Science. PS gave me sneak peeks at a lot of upcoming technologies like:
- the Wankel rotary engine, which PS described in great detail a few years before Mazda started using it in their automobiles.
- the Sony Mavica, an electronic (but not-yet digital) camera that stored its photographs onto a specialized floppy disk.
- the Amiga 1000 computer, which I later bought as soon as it appeared in stores.
If you’re a technophile, you’ll be glad to know that Popular Science now offers a free online archive of its entire 137 years of publication.
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Education, Entertainment, Future, History, Personal, Science, Technology