AROUND OUR COM pany’s offices, people like to revisit a 1994 article from our sister publication, American Heritage . It shows a set of trading cards from the late nineteenth century that depict not baseball players or actresses but prominent newspaper editors. Staring at the grid of chromolithographs of thoughtful-looking men, nearly every one bearing facial hair and a name that is entirely forgotten today, is a sobering reminder of the obscurity that awaits us all—at least those few of us who have not managed to achieve obscurity already. This end seems appropriate with newspapers, which, as journalists like to remind themselves, are fated to be repurposed for wrapping fish (which is one more use than can be found for old magazines).
Not long ago a slow afternoon, an impending deadline, and the purchase of some baseball cards for a nephew combined to inspire a search for similar cards relating to technology and invention. There aren’t many. In 2000 the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers put out a miniset of five Canadian engineering triumphs, all fairly recent: a jet engine, a robotic hand, an integrated circuit for fiber optics, a new type of compact disc, and, of course, a hockey helmet. Beyond this lie a number of airplane and military technology card sets aimed at enthusiasts for such things. And that’s about it. The deficiency is discouraging; after all, engineers do much more for society than, say, social theorists, who have their own set of cards at www. theorycards.org.uk .
Science and mathematics cards are easier to get hold of. A set of 102 is available for purchase under the unfortunate name Nerdkards. These can be found at www.nerdkards.com .
A different group of 26, with slightly greater design sophistication, is at www.alltooflat.com/geeky/ scientists. Mathematician cards can be found at www.mathcards.com, but (befitting their subject, perhaps) they are strictly virtual, so if you want a set, you’ll have to print them out and glue on the backs yourself.
Chemistry trading cards have a long history partly because, in an odd twist, one of the world’s most prolific publishers of trading cards was founded by the great German chemist Justus von Liebig. The company originally produced (and still makes) a meat extract Liebig invented, but it soon branched out into creating cards for promotional purposes. In 1929, between issuing such sure-fire hits as Birds’ Feathers and Their Uses, The Inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, and Old Belgian Farms, it published a set of six Famous Chemist cards. Another six-card Liebig set depicted the history of alchemy, and in the 1930s a Belgian cigarette company put out its own set of chemist cards.
Perhaps the most ambitious effort came in 1953, when the sports-card company Topps put out a set of 135 “Look ‘n See” cards of nonsports figures (with the lone exception of Babe Ruth). It included Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, George W. Goethals, Wilbur Wright, and many others from technology and science among such disparate luminaries as Nero, Anne of Cleves, Billy the Kid, and John Philip Sousa. (Strangely, there are no editors in the set.) Original Look ‘n See cards can be bought for a few dollars apiece, and until some enterprising (or foolhardy) entrepreneur comes along to issue a new set for the twenty-first century, it looks as if they will have to suffice.
