Scientific American

With my love of old scientific apparatus, I was excited to find a couple of sites showing pages from 19th century issues of Scientific American: A Weekly Publication of Information, Art, Science, Mechanics, Chemistry and Manufacturers. The first Scientific American was issued August 28, 1845.

One of the sites is MagazineArt.org (vintage magazine cover and advertising art from the golden age of American illustration), and if my link works it should take you to an amazing illustration of an early machine gun cleverly mounted to the back of a camel from the first page of the March 2, 1872 issue.

The second site is called Scientific American Past. Issues date from 1870 to 1931 with a few gaps. There you can read the history of Scientific American extracted from the five volume A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott. There is a .99 cent per image fee for high resolution printable image files and articles.