Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871: A Weekly Journal of Practical Information, Art, Science,; Mechanics, Chemistry, and Manufactures.Various
Science
Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871: A Weekly Journal of Practical Information, Art, Science,; Mechanics, Chemistry, and Manufactures.
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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