Last week I noticed that it was New Scientist magazine's 50th anniversary (I noticed this fact because a great big 50 was plastered all over the front cover of the copies in our office).
On the New Scientist website is a facsimile of the first-ever issue with a link to an article "How New Scientist got started". There is a forum in which readers can suggest the "biggest scientific advances" of the past 50 years, and a selection of past articles on topics like television without wires, a baby computer (the Burroughs E101), a threatened influenza epidemic from Hong Kong in 1957, the relationship between diet and heart disease, and so on.
Two articles in particular caught my attention, one for me and one for Debra Hamel. Mine: The Thing About Beards (which, sadly, turns out to be about a "shaving device"); Debra's: Wind in the loo, reporting a new type of commode for the space shuttle. "From the outside it looks much like the uncomfortable apparata in jet airliners. In the works, however, liquid and solid wastes are directed into separate pipes by high velocity air streams (apparently not warmed)." More gory details ensue, but I will draw a veil and leave Debra to comment on those if she is so inclined.
Incidentally, Nature has the full contents of its first issue, published 4 November 1869, on its website. Unfortunately, it does not contain the journal's mission statement, as this seems to have missed the deadline. That is in the second issue (11 November) , and can be seen here.
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