Free Popular Science Back Issues
Popular Science magazine just made its 137-year archive available online, with no charge for browsing. PopSci.com, the official website for Popular Science, has partnered with Google to provide the full contents of each issue, including the original advertisements. The archive is a mind-blowing resource, showing how people in the past thought about the future. It’s fascinating to see which scientific predictions came true and which remained just dreams.
The Google interface to the archive includes a search box to let you search by topic. You can also see a hyperlinked Table of Contents for each issue and jump to articles that way. The archive can be accessed via an iPhone. Prepare to lose yourself for several hours browsing through the interesting articles and stunning retro illustrations.