A SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AWAKENING

Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. A SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AWAKENING.

A SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AWAKENING.

Our English cotemporary, Engineering, appears to have seriously exercised itself in the perusal of our good-natured article on "English and American Scientific and Mechanical Engineering Journalism," which appeared in the Scientific American, February 4th; at least, we so judge from the tenor of an article in response thereto, covering a full page of that journal. The article in question is a curiosity in literature. It deserves a much wider circulation than Engineering can give it, and we would gladly transfer it to our columns, but for its exceeding length—a serious fault generally, not only with Engineering's articles, but most other technical journals published in England. It would scarcely do for them to be brief in their discussions, and above all other things, spice and piquancy must always be excluded. Engineering evidently labors under the conviction that the heavier it can make its discussions, the more profoundly will it be able to impress its readers. Hence, we are equally astonished and gratified to find a gleam of humor flashing out from the ordinary sober-sided composition of our learned contemporary. The article came to us just as we were laboring under an attack of dyspepsia, and its reading fairly shook our atrabilious corpus. We said to ourselves, "can it be possible that Engineering is about to experience the new birth, to undergo regeneration, and a baptism of fire?" The article is really worth reading, and we begin to indulge the hope that at least one English technical is going to try to make itself not only useful, but readable and interesting. And what is most perplexingly novel in this new manifestation, is the display of a considerable amount of egotism, which we had always supposed to be a sinful and naughty thing in technical journalism. And, as if to magnify this self-complaisance, it actually alludes to its "own extensive and ever-increasing circulation in America." Now to show how small a thing can impart comfort to the soul of our cotemporary, we venture to say that the circulation of Engineering in this country cannot much exceed three hundred copies per week.

It evidently amazes our English cotemporary that a journal like the Scientific American, which, according to its own notions, is chiefly the work of "scissors and paste," should circulate so widely; and it even belittles our weekly circulation by several thousand copies, in order to give point to its very amusing, and, we will also add, generally just criticism.

The writer in Engineering, whoever he may be, appears to be a sort of literary Rip Van Winkle, just waking out of a long sleep; and he cannot get the idea through his head that it is possible that a technical journal can become a vehicle of popular information to the mass of mankind, instead of being the organ of a small clique of professional engineers or wealthy manufacturers, such as seems to hold control of the columns of Engineering, and who use it either to ventilate their own pet schemes and theories, or to advertise, by illustration and otherwise, in the reading columns, a repetition of lathes, axle-boxes brakes, cars, and other trade specialities, which can lay little or no claim to novelty. It is, furthermore, a crying sin in the estimation of our English critic that American technical journals do not separate their advertisements from the subject matter; and he thinks that when Yankee editors learn that trade announcements are out of place in the body of a journal, they will see how to make their journals pay by making them higher priced. Now we venture to say, without intending to give offence, that Yankee editors understand their business quite as well as do English editors; and it is presumable, at least, that they know what suits their readers on this side, much better than do English editors. We venture to suggest—modestly, of course—that journalism in the two countries is not the same, and should the editor of Engineering undertake to transfer his system of intellectual labor to this side of the Atlantic, he would not be long in making the discovery that those wandering Bohemian engineers, who, he tells us, are in sorrow and heaviness over the short-comings of American technical journals, would turn out after all to be slender props for him to lean upon. We think it probable, however, that with a little more snap, a journal like Engineering might possibly attain a circulation, in this country, of 500 or 1000 copies weekly.

Why, American engineers have scarcely yet been able to organize themselves into an association for mutual advancement in their profession, much less to give the reading public the benefit of their experience and labors! This fact alone ought, of itself, to satisfy Engineering that no such journal could profitably exist in this country. Whenever our American engineers are ready to support such a journal, there will be no difficulty in finding a publisher.

Engineering, in its casual reference to the various technical journals of America, omits to name our leading scientific monthly, but introduces with just commendation a venerable cotemporary, now upwards of three score years of age. Now, it is no disparagement of this really modest monthly to say, that perhaps there are not sixty hundred people in the States who know it, even by name; and so far as the use of "scissors and paste" are made available in our technical journals, we venture the assertion that the editorial staff expenses of the Scientific American are as great, if not greater, than those of Engineering. The question, however, is not so much one of original outlay, but which of the two journals gives most for the money. In this very essential particular, and with no intention to depreciate the value of Engineering, we assert, with becoming modesty, that the Scientific American occupies a position which Engineering will never be able to attain.

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