Discovering Science from an Armchair: Popular Science in British Magazines of the Interwar Years

ABSTRACT

Analysing the contents of magazines published with the stated intention of conveying information about science and technology to the public provides a mechanism for evaluation what counted as ‘popular science’. This article presents numerical surveys of the contents of three magazines published in inter-war Britain (Discovery, Conquest and Armchair Science) and offers an evaluation of the results. The problem of defining relevant topic-categories is addressed, both direct and indirect strategies being employed to ensure that the topics correspond to what the editors and publishers took to be the principal areas of science and technology of interest to their readers. Analysis of the results of the surveys reveals different editorial policies depending on the backgrounds of the publishers and their anticipated readerships. The strong focus of the two most populist magazines on applied science and ‘hobbyist’ topics such as natural history, radio and motoring is noted and contrasted with the very limited coverage of theoretical science. In conclusion, a survey of changes in the contents over the periods of publication is used to identify trends in the coverage of science during this period.

Notes

¹Peter J. Bowler, Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago, 2009); chapter one provides further details of the historiographical issues raised by this material.

²Ibid., chapter nine. For further details of the authors who wrote for the magazines based on the additional material used here see Peter J. Bowler, ‘Popular Science Magazines in Inter-War Britain: Authors and Readerships', Science in Context, 26 (2013), 437–57.

³Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumphrey, ‘Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and on Science in Popular Culture’, History of Science, 32 (1994), 232–67; Geoffrey Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth, eds., Science Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Geoffrey Cantor, Gowan Dawson, Graeme Gooday, Richard Noakes, Sally Shuttleworth and Jonanthan R. Topham, eds., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge, 2004); Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago, 2007). See also Stephen Hilgartner, ‘The Dominant View of Popularization: Conceptual Problems, Political Uses', Social Studies of Science, 20 (1990), 519–39.

⁴Peter Broks, ‘Science, Media and Culture: British Magazines, 1890-1914’, Public Understanding of Science, 2 (1993), 123–39 and Broks, Understanding Popular Science (Maidenhead, 2006), 59–61, the latter responding to the concerns articulated by, for instance, John C. Burnham, How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ, 1987).

⁵Ruth Barton, ‘Just before Nature: The Purposes of Science and the Purposes of Popularization in Some English Popular Science Journals of the 1860s', Annals of Science, 55 (1998), 1–33.

⁶For details of the magazines' operations see Bowler, Science for All (note 1), chapter nine and Julie Ann Lancashire, ‘The Popularization of Science in General Science Periodicals in Britain, 1890-1939’, PhD dissertation. University of Kent at Canterbury, 1988.

⁷Details of how the magazine was founded are given in the ‘Editorial Notes' for the first issue, Discovery, 1 (1920), 3–4.

⁸Ibid, p. 3.

⁹‘From the Editor's Chair’, Conquest, 1 (1919), 18.

¹⁰See Ursula Bloom, He Lit the Lamp: A Biography of Professor A. M. Low (London, 1959).

¹¹‘From the Editor's Chair’ (note 9).

¹²‘From the Editor's Chair’, Conquest, 2 (1920), 14.

¹³‘A League of Amateur Astronomers', Armchair Science, 10 (1938), 33.

¹⁴Card located between the December 1933 and January 1934 issues of Armchair Science, Cambridge University Library copy.

¹⁵List compiled from the April, May and June issues, excluding general material such as Science Notes, Books, Readers' Letters, and Low's regular editorials.

¹⁶An exception to this point was Lancelot Hogben's ‘The Present State of Evolutionary Theory’, Discovery, 5 (1924), 11–16, 61–5 and 102–6. Curiously, Julian Huxley did not produce a popular article on this topic despite writing frequently for both Conquest and Discovery. An article on industrial melanism in the peppered moth by H. Onslow, ‘Black Moths: The History of their Evolution’, Conquest, 3 (September, 1921), 491–6 makes little reference to natural selection although it does conclude that the melanic form is somehow more resistant to industrial pollution.

¹⁷E.g., Anon., ‘What Happens when we Cook?’ Armchair Science, 1 (April 1929), 61–2.

¹⁸See Bowler, Science for All (note 1), pp. 156–7.

¹⁹Based on a sample of copies from 1921in the author’s collection.

²⁰On the relativity boom see Katy Price, Loving Faster than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein's Universe (Chicago, 2012).

²¹Examples of articles on ornithology from a single year include V. C. Wynn-Edwards, ‘Rhythms in Bird Behaviour’, Discovery, 11 (January 1930), 28–31; M. G. S. Best, ‘The Habits of the Gannet’, Discovery, 11 (August 1930), 277–80 and E. M. Nicholson, ‘The Next Step in Ornithology’, Discovery, 11 (October 1930), 330–32.

²²Theodore Robin, ‘The Real Doctor Voronoff’, Armchair Science, 1 (1920), 202–3 and ‘Doctor Voronoff and the Monkey Glands' Armchair Science, 1 (1920), 269–70.

²³E.g. Anon, ‘What is Margarine?’ Conquest, 1 (November 1919), 55–61; E. Austin, ‘Our Housemaid – Electricity’, Conquest, 1 (January 1920), 112–18; Frank C. Perkins, ‘Washing Up De-Lux’, Conquest, 1 (January 1920), 147; Anon, ‘What Happens When we Cook?’ Armchair Science, 1 (April 1929), 62.

²⁴E.g., Thomas Moult, ‘The Renaissance of the English Short Story’, Discovery, 3 (February 1922), 48–50 and Anon, ‘The Teaching of English in England’, Discovery, 3 (February 1922), 52–4

²⁵Low's ‘The Great Murchison Mystery’ commenced publication in Armchair Science, volume 8 (September 1936), 246–8 and 283 and ran until volume 9 (November 1937), 342–3 and 378. The penultimate episode (October 1937), 294–5 and 334 announced that it was to be published as a book under the title Mars Breaks Through.

²⁶The first story was George Gamow, ‘Mr. Tomkins in Wonderland, Dream 1’, Discovery, n.s. 1 (December 1938), 431–9 and the last, ‘Dream 6’, in May 1939, 230–5.

²⁷Anon., ‘The World of Sound’, Conquest, 1 (February-April 1920), 170–4, 231–5, and 295–8. On Conquest's coverage of relativity see Price, Loving Faster than Light (note 20), pp. 42–53.

²⁸Julian Huxley, ‘The Pigmentary Effector System’, Discovery, 6 (January 1925), 8–9 and J. B. S. Haldane, ‘Enzymes and the Future’, Discovery, 6 (October 1925), 105–6.

²⁹Lancashire, ‘The Popularization of Science’ (note 4), 70–84.

³⁰Hector MacPherson provided ‘Amongst the Stars' from August 1923 to March 1924 (vols. 4-5). J. A. Lloyd revived the feature under the same title in January 1927 and it continued, with A. C. D. Crommelin taking over in September 1927, until February 1929 (vols. 8–10).

³¹Two examples are Sir Arthur W. Hill, ‘Research for the African Farmer’, Discovery, 12 (August 1931), 257–60 and J. G. Myers, ‘Fighting Agricultural Pests', Discovery, 12 (September 1931), 298–302, the latter devoted solely to pests affecting crops in the tropics.

³²E.g. F. W. FitzSimmons, ‘Cannibals of the Snake World’, Discovery, 12 (March 1931), 73–5 and David Bannerman, ‘New Birds from West Africa’, ibid (May 1931), 137–41.

³³David Masters, ‘Whittling the Willow’, Conquest, 2 (July 1921), 369–70 and Anon., ‘Golf Balls', Conquest, 2 (September 1921), 464–6.

³⁴See Arne Schirmacher, ‘From Kosmos to Koralle: The Culture of Science Reading in Imperial and Weimar Germany’, in Quantum Mechanics and Weimar Culture: Revisiting the Forman Thesis, ed. by Catherine Carson, Alexei Kojenikov and Helmuth Trischler (London, 2010), 43–52.