Long-Term Reading of a Single Publication

It’s fun to look at old issues of a magazine and see how interests have shifted, cultural norms have changed, and even how we use language differently. These are often the kinds of changes that occur slowly, over the course of decades or even lifetimes (see mesofacts). But few people have had the opportunity to […]

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It's fun to look at old issues of a magazine and see how interests have shifted, cultural norms have changed, and even how we use language differently. These are often the kinds of changes that occur slowly, over the course of decades or even lifetimes (see mesofacts). But few people have had the opportunity to read a single publication for that long, in real time.

One notable exception is my grandfather, Irwin Arbesman. He is turning 97 this summer and has been reading about science as well as science fiction since he was a boy. When the iphoness first came out, he could say with the authority of someone who has been reading science fiction since the modern dawn of the genre (he read Dune when it was serialized in a magazine) that this was the object he had been reading about for years, and that is now a reality.

Well, a few months ago I was chatting with him and he mentioned how he started reading Popular bet365体育赛事 because his freshman high school science teacher required all the students to subscribe. And he never stopped reading it. A quick calculation revealed that this meant that my grandfather has been reading a single magazine since 1931: over 80 years!

Happily, he was recently recognized in the page of *Popular bet365体育赛事 *for this:

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I had a chance to ask my grandfather about the changes that he's noticed in the magazine over a span of eighty years. One thing he noticed, he told me, is that the do it yourself projects have changed significantly. While they used to be fairly rudimentary, they now require a great deal more technological expertise. Furthermore, since electronics was in its infancy, you could do pretty much everything that was possible at home.

The automobiles used to be a big focus too. Cars certainly are much more technological than they were many decades ago, and due to this, fewer people take them apart and play with them anymore. There used to be instructions in the magazine on how to soup up a car, or even change your oil. And of course, ham radio also had its heyday.

With *Wired *only having had its 20th anniversary last year, we have some time before I can chat with someone who has been reading the magazine for 80 years. But if you know anyone else who has read a magazine for a good fraction of a century, please let me know in the comments.

Top image:Sean Winters/Flickr/CC