About five years ago, Popular Mechanics was doing a story on a new class of submarines called attack subs. The Pentagon supplied access to subs, but the magazine lacked photos of the machines in action.
Editor Joe Oldham pestered Pentagon officials for months to get these photos. One day a naval commander called Oldham and told him to have his photographer ready at a spot 100 miles off Norfolk, Va., at 8 a.m. on a specific day.
“So our photographer, art director and a couple other people rented a helicopter the day before and flew out to the area we thought where we should be on the Atlantic Ocean,” recalls Oldham. “Suddenly, a submarine came out of the water, the commander radioed our helicopter, and says, `OK, you have 10 minutes.’ So for 10 minutes, this multimillion dollar submarine did whatever our art director wanted. At precisely 8:10, the commander said, `OK, we got to go.’ The submarine went under water, and they never saw it again.”
But the photos surfaced on the cover of Popular Mechanics. This illustrates the extra mile that the general-readership technical magazine (often called PM) will go to satisfy readers. It’s a formula that has kept the magazine in business for 100 years.
Henry Haven Windsor founded Popular Mechanics in Chicago in January 1902. A native of Marshalltown, Iowa, Windsor printed his first newspaper at 12 and worked at his hometown paper. In 1891, he published the Street Railway Review, a transportation trade paper, out of his Chicago office. He added another publication for the clay industry called The Brick in 1894.
Windsor thought there was a market for a magazine explaining new technologies simply. So in late 1901 he opened a small office and acted as the publisher, editor and virtually the sole writer for Popular Mechanics.
That first issue, with the tag line “Written So You Can Understand It,” covered the horseless carriage (now called the automobile), boating, the electrification of America and home improvement. An annual subscription to the 16-page weekly was $1, with a newsstand price of a nickel. By the end of 1902, Windsor had 10,000 subscribers. In 1903, Popular Mechanics expanded to a 100-page publication.
Though Windsor added full-time writers, PM editorial has been known for its contributors including Guglielmo Marconi writing about his wireless telegraphy and inventor Thomas Edison, who alerted the public to the dangers of radium in 1903.
“I’m through with X-rays, radium and everything of that kind. Not only is my left eye badly affected by the Roentgen ray, but I am having all kinds of trouble with my stomach,” Edison wrote.
Popular Mechanics remained in Chicago through the ’70s, though it was bought by the Hearst Corp. in 1958.
“Probably each editor has applied his own flavor,” said publisher Jay McGill. “Our current editor, Joe Oldham, has an automotive background, and you can see that flavor in the magazine. The automotive section has been more robust than in past years.” Oldham came on board in 1985. Previous editor John Linkletter had a military science background, so there were many military-related covers in the 1970s.
One hundred years later, the magazine that began on a shoestring in Chicago is a multimillion-dollar operation based in New York City. An annual subscription to Popular Mechanics costs $21.97, and a single copy goes for $3.50. Circulation tops 1.2 million, after reaching a high of 1.6 million in the 1980s, and readers turn to the writing of comedian and car buff Jay Leno in his monthly column, the publication’s most popular feature.
“People can relate to him,” says Oldham. “They can tell he’s not a phony, that he really likes his subject matter. He writes about what he loves.”
What makes PM a success?
“A dogged resistance to following what’s trendy,” says McGill. “The magazine has been true to its charter since day one and has appealed to guys’ basic instinct, which is that guys are eternally curious. From the time they’re born, they’re pulling things apart to find out how they work. Not to be sexist, we’ve appealed to that curiosity. With the same toy, girls will play in a creative way, while boys will pull it apart and find out how it works.”
Though the magazine targets men, women account for 13 percent of its readership. “We cover cars, tanks, UFOs and mysteries of science,” said McGill.
There are no plans to change the magazine’s format or editorial. “Our editor [Oldham] doesn’t want to shock the readership,” says associate publisher Bill Congdon.
One industry watcher thinks that philosophy will lead to more success in Popular Mechanics’ second century.
“If they can hold their own, they will be in good shape,” said Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor whose Web site, mrmagazine.com, tracks magazine launches and demises.
Holding its own
But he also feels that the magazine’s broad reach has the potential to backfire. If readers are interested in cars, for example, they can pick up Motor Trend, Car&Driver or other periodicals that give more information about a certain subject than does Popular Mechanics.
“It’s trying to cover too much; there are so many specialty magazines now,” he said.
Still, he does not predict major problems.
“Just the mere fact that it has lasted so long is not going to be taken lightly,” Husni said.
Part of Popular Mechanics’ appeal may be its nostalgia. “In times that are difficult, studies have shown a renewed interest in things that remind us of times when we felt more secure, safer. PM has nostalgic appeal. People grew up with it in their household. I wish I had a dollar for every time I hear, `I had PM in my house,'” said McGill, who owns old issues dating to 1935.
Orville E. Druehl, a native of Youngtown, Ariz., has been reading the magazine since the 1940s. His wife would send him Popular Mechanics when was a Marine stationed in Korea. “The magazine gave me a feeling of home, and I felt connected to the U.S.A.,” he said.
Part of family
Druehl built a magazine rack in the bathroom in the couple’s home in Bettendorf, Iowa, where they raised their three daughters. “I always kept several copies of Popular Mechanics in that rack. As the girls got a little older, they would bring out the magazine and show me pictures and ask questions about the articles. It was a wonderful, sharing experience,” he says.
Even when the girls stopped bringing the magazine out of the bathroom to share with Dad, they continued reading it and using articles about space in school science projects.
“I was born in 1942 and my earliest memories include my dad reading Popular Mechanics at the kitchen table,” said Philip Wylie York of Irving, Texas. “I was drawn to the colorful, daring cover artwork. My dad let me look through the magazine until there were no more pictures to look at.”
The two built a winter bird feeder from a PM magazine article. Four generations of the York family have built projects described in the periodical.
“It’s packed with the kind of information you can share with friends,” Oldham said.
