Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Technology
The ups and downs of the invention that forever altered the American skyline
Of the mechanical wonders placed on view in the Crystal Palace, the great iron-and-glass exhibition hall erected in New York City in 1853 to house America’s first world’s fair, one of the most popular was a towering machine that was destined to transform the
The Agony of J. Robert Oppenheimer
In the life of J.
Long before the energy crunch became a crisis, Rube Goldberg was lampooning the American fascination with gadgetry that helped bring it about.
THE WAY I SEE IT
I was talking with my friend Leonard about the matter of keeping a house warm in the depths of a northern Michigan winter, and he asked if I knew what the most beautiful sound in the world was.
Fifty European nations came to America on her hundredth birthday—and, for the first time, took her seriously
Centennials don’t make sense. It should be evident that a hundredth anniversary is a mere numerical happenstance without historic significance.
the world’s greatest inventor
The last half of the nineteenth century was a time of creative progress. Invention, especially the kind that was designed to improve the quality of life, had taken firm hold of the public imagination and would not let go for nearly a century.
As Lincoln lay dying from an assassin’s bullet across the street from Ford’s Theatre through the grim night of April 14, 1865, frequent bulletins on his sinking condition clicked between the major American cities along the country’s spreading web of Morse tel
The fastest man in the air competed with the Wrights for ten years, became rich, and awakened America to the air age.
America has long been celebrated as a nation of inventive tinkerers.
With a wave of his plastic wand Carl Fisher transformed a tangle of mangrove swamps into a peculiarly American resort
Rogers once remarked that Florida would still be known mainly for turpentine rather than for its sunshine resorts if it hadn’t been for Carl Graham Fisher, a brisk little entrepreneur and promoter from Indianapolis.
The making and breaking of codes and ciphers has played an exciting and often crucial part in American history
By choice, cryptographers are an unsung and anonymous lot. In war and peace they labor in their black chambers, behind barred doors, dispatching sheets of secret symbols and reading encoded messages from the innermost councils of foreign governments.
So Richmond proudly described its electric trolleys, the first truly successful system in the world
For the citizens of Richmond, Virginia, in 1888 the city’s new trolley system was a source of inordinate pride.
OF BALLOONS, THE FIRST AIR-MAIL LETTERS, AND THE EVER-ENTERPRISING FRANKLIN FAMILY
Seventy-seven-year-old Benjamin Franklin was at the top of his form in the fall of 1783. Minister to the court of France since 1776, this revered figure from the new young country had scored widely in France.
In the year 1854 a young man named George Washington Eastman rather reluctantly maintained a residence in Waterville, New York.
The celebrated novelist and historian John Dos Passos wrote a prose poem about the visit that Albert Einstein paid to Charles Steinmetz, the "The Wizard of Schenectady."
John Dos Passos died last September, much to the sorrow of this magazine, to which he had contributed frequently in recent years.
For a very long time it has been supposed that man could adjust himself to almost anything in the way of speed, noise, or financial outlay, just to get from one place to another in the least possible time.
Featured Authors
