A Cradle Of Genius?

As a teen-ager, in the 1920s and 1930s, Charles H. Townes was a tireless reader of Popular Mechanics . “It was one of my favorite magazines, and I built a lot of things I saw in its pages,” he recalls. “It gave me a view of what was going on in science and technology that I might not have had growing up in South Carolina.” By the time he was twenty-four, he was on the staff of Bell Labs; today he is known as the inventor of the laser.

Popular Mechanics has fed the appetites of many young readers whose later accomplishments might find a prominent place in its stories. One of the earliest was the aviator Jimmy Doolittle. He built his first airplane, while in his teens, from a design in the magazine. Later he became the first man to fly across the United States in less than a day and the leader of the first American bombing raid over Tokyo.

Frank Davidson, a leading champion of the undying effort to plan a tunnel across the English Channel, traces his inspiration directly to an article he read when he was twelve. “If it hadn’t been for that article, the project might not have been revived after World War II,” he says. He is currently pursuing it with French and English authorities, and both Prime Minister Thatcher and President Mitterrand have expressed interest.

The magazine has captivated nontechnological creators, too, of course. George Gershwin loved it so much he once invited it to a party. During a luncheon at his home, according to the writer Kay Halle, “he asked his butler to go out and bring back six copies of Popular Mechanics , his favorite magazine—one for each guest.”