Forty-four Years After
Herbert Spencer brought
the magazine into being
While the idea was Youmans', Herbert Spencer deserves the credit for bringing The Popular Science Monthly into actual being. A warm friendship had sprung up between the two, based upon the American's admiration for the Englishman's work.
Youmans had written to Spencer that he had temporarily abandoned the plan of starting the magazine when he received the first of a series of articles which Spencer had promised to write for the new publication. The articles reached Youmans in April, 1872, and the first issue of the new magazine appeared the following month.
Thus the May issue of 1916 marks the beginning of the forty-fifth year of The Popular Science Monthly.
The Herbert Spencer articles made a sensation and the magazine was a success from the start.
Famous men who thought
deeply and wrote simply.
Youmans was able to get great men to write for his magazine. In addition to Spencer's there were articles by John Tyndall, Thomas Huxley, Professor R. A. Proctor, Dr. Henry Maudsley, Henry Ward Beecher and others who thought profoundly and were able to write simply.
Within a year and a half the circulation was 12,000 and that would be a big circulation for a monthly that sold for fifty cents a copy and $5 a year, even in these days of large volume.
The Popular Science Monthly became the most famous publication in America because it was as widely known in Europe as it was in this country.
Youmans edited the magazine until his death in 1887. His successors, under different ownerships, ably maintained his original policy long after this policy accomplished its work.
The Youmans policy did not enlarge with the public mind it educated. Those who continued it did not take into consideration that the thought, activities and manner of living of the whole nation had changed.
The Youmans idea is as big, as vital, as ever it was. The plan for
