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The first popular science edition hit newsstands in May 1872, with founding editor Edward Livingston Youmans acknowledging that the publication was “experimental” and expected him, his staff, and the public to “give it a fair trial.” just”. that experiment is still running 150 years later, and we’ve kept our records tidy. Anyone with an internet connection can flip through decades of problems and see exactly what we’ve observed over generations.
You are reading: Google books popular science
Thanks to a 2010 partnership with Google, 137 years of PopSci magazines are now available on Google Books. that’s it, from the first issue to March 2009, all scanned to appear on your screen exactly as it did on paper. eat your heart out, gutenberg. for more recent editions, you’ll need to subscribe or keep an eye on our website for pieces we choose to republish there.
By default, you’ll see information about the first issue, but you can click on any decade under the browse all issues heading to see everything that was published during those years. they are displayed chronologically, so you’ll find later issues further to the right; scroll through the carousel to get there.
When you find an issue you’re interested in, click its cover thumbnail preview or the month and year below it, and it will replace the first issue at the top of the page. google will also take you back to the top of the page, and you can click the thumbnail or preview this magazine to open it in your browser.
click on any issue published in 1917 or later and google should also show a preview of the table of contents below the carousel of decades (you’ll have to scroll down to see it). you can click here to go directly to that journal’s table of contents.
Google also displays a word cloud for each problem below the carousel, showing which terms appear frequently within (the larger the word, the more often it is used). you can click on any of these words to perform a search on the issue you selected.
tips for searching the popsci file
You may be happy to search issue by issue, but if you’re looking for something specific, you’ll need to know how to search. google books displays a search bar below the selected issue summary on the popsci main page (don’t use the one at the top of the screen), or in the sidebar that appears on the left side of your screen when you start to read a problem.
If you want to search for all popsci issues, be sure to fill in the search all issues checkbox below your search terms. leave it empty to search only within the selected issue or the one you are currently viewing. type your search terms, then click search within if you’re on the main page or go if you’re using the sidebar.
When you search within a single issue, Google will preview a snippet of the page the term appears on, with the word highlighted. if it appears more than once, you can use the yellow bar at the top of the page to sort by relevance or page order (pages), or press clear search to return to the full journal.
[related: the search engines you’ll need for each type of question]
See Also: Black Lives Matter books: 26 to read learn more about racism
search for something within all problems will create a google search results style page with selected text that includes what you are looking for. if there are many, you can reduce the time period by clicking the anytime dropdown menu and selecting a custom range or the 21, 20th century or 19th century.
When you’re ready, you can click the cover thumbnail, full view, or the magazine title to open it. Google will take you to a page that includes your search term, with the word highlighted, and the yellow toolbar at the top will tell you how many times it appears in that number. you can press previous or next to jump to others, or view all to get more detailed previews of each instance.
you can customize the look of a magazine in the archive
once you’ve opened a magazine in google book viewer, you have a few layout options, all displayed in the toolbar at the top of the page.
how to navigate an archived magazine once you open it
Single page, magazine style and grid layouts also have their own navigational tricks. for single-page viewing, you can scroll up or down, use the up-down arrow keys on your keyboard, or double-click a page to jump to the next (but you can’t click to go back). if you’re viewing two pages at once, you can’t scroll or use the keyboard’s arrow keys, but you can double-click the right page to go forward or the left page to flip back. click any page in the grid layout and it will zoom to that page as if you had selected single page view; Switching between grid and reading view is a good way to move quickly if you’re looking for something specific.
If you want to go back to the main popsci page (the carousel) to see another issue, the best way to do it is to click on about this magazine in the sidebar on the left side of your screen. as a reminder, click the full screen icon (four arrows) to retrieve it if it’s not there.
other popsci file tools
We’ve already covered most of it, but there are a couple of tools on the google books toolbar that don’t fit into the other categories.