The Engineering Magazine
Today, a revealing old magazine. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
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Historians have written so much about 1914 – when World War One began. Well, I’ve just found an odd window into that year: the December issue of The Engineering Magazine. That’s four months after war had begun with the “Guns of August”. The first article wonders how that distant conflict might affect commerce. Will the war be over quickly? Or might it extend into winter?
They’re unaware that, four years later, they’ll have lost some of their readers Over There. Well, so much for a perceived minor blip in distant Europe. Let’s see what occupies the rest of this old periodical.
The subtitle tells us that it’s devoted to the interests of proprietors, engineers, and managers. It’s meant for the captains of industry and their lieutenants. The longest article is one of a series about Henry Ford making Model-T cars. We don’t see the words “Assembly Line” announcing the enormity of what’s happening. Only mind-numbing detail about work stations in a Ford Plant.
Image from the article about Ford’s plant
So: let’s turn to the advertisements. They’ll say far more about the state of American manufacturing in the wake of America’s so-called Gilded Age. The Bible says “Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.” That reminds us what really matters to the magazine and its readers.
A typical page of advertisements
The ads are a virtual symposium on how technology then functioned. You could buy cut gears, hoists, lathes, pumps, belts and pulleys. But what’s really intriguing is how we then stood in the doorway of so much invention.
A fancy camera mount lets us photograph documents. That’s how we did it before we had Xerox. So much technology in transition here. They still sell the occasional steam engine, along with the newer steam turbines that replaced them.
I’m especially struck by their sale of electric motors. The first ones were still huge beasts that drove belts and pullies throughout a factory. It made far more sense to use steam turbines to drive electric generators. Then to wire electricity throughout the factory where it could drive small electric motors at each work station. Here, we see a huge transformation beginning. Unrecognized!
And we see antediluvian means for recording data: Rotating paper discs being marked in red ink with a moving needle. (Well – I worked with the last of those, back in the 1950s.)
I read this old magazine with a mix of nostalgia and shock. For I grew up much closer to that world than to the one we now occupy. It’s a somber reminder that people in the 22nd century will shake their heads at our struggles. How we tried to adapt to AI – and to so much more technology that was only just emerging.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)
The Engineering Magazine: Specially Devoted to the Interests of Proprietors, Engineers & Managers. December, 1914
This Episode first aired March 10, 2026.