Magazine
Today, what is a 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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We get our word magazine from the Arab word makhzan – a storehouse. For most of its life in English, magazine meant military storage. It ranged from gunpowder sheds, all the way down to bullet holders for guns. Meanwhile print moved from books to newspapers – to periodicals with many articles on various subjects. No longer just news, but a new kind of storehouse for articles of general interest.
The famous progenitor of such periodicals was England’s Gentlemen’s Magazine. Not the first such periodical. But, in 1731, it became the first to use that word. And from there it became an idea that had to spread. Our late Nineteenth Century American Century Magazine was just one of its progeny. And, as I read, I come to a realization.
For here is a nearly forgotten means for gaining new ideas. You and I turn on the TV. We query the Internet or AI. We look for the sort of things we want to know. The old magazines denied us that tempting avenue. Just think: We didn’t even have the preselected content of radio. And I realize that the magic of the old magazines lay in answering questions that we had not thought to ask.
Now I thumb through my bound volumes of Century Magazine. And they offer a most amazing display of every kind of lore. I was, at first, surprised to see that it says very little about current events. But that was for newspapers.
These articles tell of history, foreign lands, new technology, politics. They offer poetry, art, literature, and illustrations by both artists and early photographers. Here is a feast for a literate readership. Let me share two items that leapt off the page at me as I read.
Of course the magazine still struggled with Nineteenth century racism. (Well, at least it struggled.) So here is a deeply respectful article about Greenland Inuit culture. Listen to this Inuit melody included in the article.
[Inuit music]
H. W. Stokes transcriptions of Inuit song melodies.
Another article describes a new aeroplane design, nine years before the Wright Brothers flew. And this is no hare-brained scheme. Hiram Maxim offers thirteen pages of research and development. His aeroplane actually flew two hundred feet before it crashed. How might history’ve changed, had he not left it and gone on to other things?
The popularity of Magazines faded after World War II. We young boys of the 1930s still earned nickels and dimes by delivering them. But television rang their death knell. Now we choose what to listen to. Things that answer only questions we’re willing to ask. Those old magazines denied us that dangerous luxury.
Hiram Maxim’s almost-successful flying machine.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)
My collected volumes of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine include issues from, Nov-Apr 1884-85, Nov-Apr 1894-95, and May-Oct, 1896
Frank Wilbert Stokes, An Arctic Studio (77o 44’ N. Lat.). The Century Magazine, Vol. LII, or New Series Vol. III, pg. 408-414,
H. S. Maxim, A New Flying-Machine: Maxim's Experiments in Aerial Navigation. The Century Magazine, Vol. XLIV, No. 3, January 1895, pp. 444-456. See also Maxim's Airplane | The Engines of Our Ingenuity
Here is Andrew Lienhard’s imagined version of No. 4 of my posted Inuit tunes. Hear also, this longer melody inspired by it.
This Episode first aired on August 3, 2026.