This “electric carriage,” which appeared in the July 27, 1889 issue of Scientific American was way ahead of its time. How ahead of its time was it? South Dakota wasn’t even a state yet. The article that went along with it noted that the patent for this ingenious contraption was granted to one Mr. Harvey D. Dibble of…
There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a baby name. My parents, for instance, did enjoy the work of Carly Simon before choosing mine, and I have a relatively normal name. It could be a fandom thing, such as with the babies named Anakin or the children named after Game of Thrones characters.
Since the Centers for Disease Control confirmed that the Zika virus could cause microcephaly in newborns, the list of the effects of the virus only continues to grow.
In 1894 the Wright Brothers’ first flight was still nearly a decade away. But people were obsessed with figuring out how to use powered flight for any number of applications. The May 5, 1894 issue of Scientific American featured one such idea—an aero-train that could zip across the country at 150 miles per hour.
Recently, we did an experiment: We took an outdated issue of a respected popular science magazine, Scientific American, and researched exactly what happened to the highly-touted breakthroughs of the era that would supposedly change everything. What we discovered is just how terrible we are at predicting the long arc…
"By this month it should be possible for a New Yorker, a Chicagoan or a Washingtonian to communicate with someone in one of the other cities by televised telephoning. The device he would use is called a Picturephone and is described by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which developed it, as 'the first…
Everybody knows that a cheetah is the world's fastest land animal. But what if you take the size of the animal into account? If you measure speed by body-length-per-second, a tiny mite about the size of a sesame seed is actually the fastest.
From Scientific American comes this gaily-animated video of Scientific American MIND editor Ingrid Wickelgren explaining why our inner ear makes us dizzy.
You may have seen the video above making the rounds on the old internet box. An anonymous Russian man is using his horse on a treadmill to power a log splitter. It's a brilliant idea, but far from new. Back in the late 19th century, the horse treadmill (or "endless floor") was considered the latest in high-tech…
In the 1950s Americans were obsessed with push-button convenience. The future promised push-button meals, push-button cleaning, and even push-button schools. But this 1955 ad for ball bearings imagined something even weirder for the world of tomorrow: the push-button lumberjack. And amazingly, it was a vision that was…
In an effort to stick out from the crowd, advertisers often come up with clever ways to reach consumers outside the traditional world of media. These efforts come in many names and varieties: experiential, guerrilla, wild postings, the list is seemingly endless. But despite how clever many of these marketing tactics…
Is this the wonder warehouse of 1962? And if so, why is everyone so... happy?
Scientists have bred mosquitoes in Guatemala that will cause mosquito genocide when they mate with normal mosquitoes. The idea is to thwart disease spread by the insects, in this case dengue fever.
Scientific American has launched a nifty new app that lets you explore exoplanets - planets outside our own solar system - from the comfort of your iPad.
In this ad from the March, 1957 issue of Scientific American we see John Q. Businessman making a “face to face” telephone call. The ad declares that thanks to the Hughes Tonotron and other products from the Hughes Aircraft Company people will soon see “on the wall television, electronic control of factory production,…
With all the Apple fakes being tossed around the internet in the hours leading up to WWDC, how can us unassuming consumers figure out what's real and what's not? Luckily, Scientific American has got our backs with several ways photo editing masters spot a fake photo.
These images of a moving sidewalk of the future ran in an 1890 issue of Scientific American. A moving sidewalk very similar to this was actually built for the 1900 Paris Exposition. You can even watch film of the sidewalk in action, shot by Thomas Edison. The images below can also be found in the excellent book …
Alien bacteria may have seeded life on Earth, says the latest issue of Scientific American. Not only that, but alien bacteria may be among us right now, breeding happily.
