The Vision of a Blind Man
making it work - that is the policy of the magazine had become moribund There was needed a fresh interpretation, a rational interpretation, to meet conditions Youmans was instrumental in bringing about.
The reason for the change in policy is the same as was the reason for starting the publication for in his prospectus which appeared the first number, the founder of the magazine said:
"The growing importance scientific knowledge to all classes of the community calls for more efficient means for diffusing it."
(The more efficient means for diffusing knowledge)
The change in the policy of The Popular Science Monthly means simply that a more efficient means of diffusing scientific knowledge has been proved.
There are now a thousand laboratories where there was one in the days when Youmans was a student. Instead of a propaganda for laboratories, The Popular Science Monthly now gives the news that comes from these laboratories it helped to establish.
It is perhaps the most important news of all. The quiet men at work in laboratories will decide the great war just as they decide how a farmer shall till the soil, how a laborer shall carry pig iron with his hands.
(Making the big idea work to fit these big times.)
The laboratories are not all in the universities, technical schools, and great industrial corporations.
Wherever a man has fitted up a little workshop for himself to carry out his ideas along scientific lines, that shop is a laboratory. News comes from it sometimes the biggest news.
It is the function of The Popular Science Monthly, not only to report this news but to interpret it-- to explain it in words and pictures -- to make it graphic to show how it can make the daily life of human beings, easier, richer, happier.
The new device for everyday, familiar use, and the discovery that leads to the foundation of a new
