Radio News was an American monthly technology magazine published from 1919 to 1971. The magazine was started by Hugo Gernsback as a magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts, but it evolved to cover all the technical aspects to radio and electronics. In 1929, a bankruptcy forced the sale of Gernsback's publishing company to B. A. Mackinnon. In 1938, Ziff-Davis Publishing acquired the magazines.
In 1904 Hugo Gernsback established Electro Importing Company to sell radio components and electrical supplies by mail order. The catalogs had detailed instructions on projects like a wireless telegraph outfit and were the predecessor of his first magazine, Modern Electrics (April 1908). In May 1913 he started another magazine, The Electrical Experimenter . The magazines would have Gernsback's bold predictions of the future as well as fiction. In 1926, he started the magazine Amazing Stories and coined the term "scientifiction" which became science fiction.
Gernsback was an enthusiastic supporter of amateur radio. During the First World War the US government placed a ban on amateur radio and Gernsback led the campaign to lift it. Gernsback started a magazine devoted to radio, Radio Amateur News (July 1919). The title was shortened to Radio News in July 1920.
These magazines were published by The Experimenter Publishing Company Inc. and would prominently show "Edited by HUGO GERNSBACK" (or "Edited by H. GERNSBACK") on the cover. Hugo and his brother Sydney had a booming empire. In addition to Experimenter Publishing, they had two radio stations and published books. They would use the money from newsstand sales to pay the printers for last month's magazine. On February 20, 1929 an involuntary petition of bankruptcy was filed against Experimenter Publishing and the April 1929 issue of Radio News was the last to feature Hugo Gernsback as editor. Gernsback quickly raised the capital for a new publishing company. He created new set of magazines to compete with his previous ones. Radio-Craft was competing with Radio News by the July 1929 issue.
Radio News new publisher was B. A. MacKinnon and the new company was Experimenter Publications which became Radio-Science Publications in June 1930. [1] Arthur H. Lynch dropped the forecasting of things to come and provided the technical information to design, service, and operate radio equipment. The cover art changed from people in dramatic or humorous scenes to a solid red cover showing a single component or piece of equipment.
Radio-Science Publications ceased operations with the August 1931 issues. Bernarr Macfadden's newly formed Teck Publishing Corporation took over with the September 1931 issue. [2] Laurence Cockaday became the editor; the format remained the same but the advances in radio and television broadened the topics covered. A common item in all radio magazines was a list of broadcast stations and short wave stations. In 1934 the covers had black-and-white photos. Color illustrations returned in 1936.
A sister magazine, Television News was published in 1931–32. [3]
The Radio News and Amazing Stories were acquired by Ziff-Davis Publishing in January 1938. [4] [5] The March issue was prepared by the Teck Publishing staff but Ziff-Davis was listed as the publisher. The magazine was down to 64 pages. The April 1938 issue was the first produced by Ziff-Davis. The cover has a full color picture of Lucille Ball and an additional 20 pages of gossip and radio star coverage. The articles were to broaden the readership to more than engineers and repair men. (Almost all of the readers were male.) The radio star covers lasted only a few months. William B. Ziff, Sr., the majority owner, was the publisher and Bernard G. Davis was the Editor. In the mid-1940s Davis became the General Manager and Oliver Read was the editor.
The great advances in electronics during World War II were finally available to consumers and industry in the late 1940s. These included television, FM radio, tape recording, Hi-Fi audio. Industry saw advanced test equipment, early computers, and improved communication systems. The two leading technical radio magazines changed their names to reflect this. In 1948 Radio-Craft became Radio-Electronics and Radio News became Radio & Television News (August 1948). It was shortened to Radio & TV News in May 1957. Both magazines had covered similar topics but Radio-Electronics emphasized repair and service while Radio & Television News emphasized design and engineering.
William Ziff Sr. died of a heart attack in December 1953. [6] His 23-year-old son, William B. Ziff, Jr., was a philosophy student at the University of Heidelberg but he immersed himself into the magazine business. [7] In 1957, William Ziff, Jr. bought out Davis' minority share. Bernard G. Davis and his son, Joel, formed Davis Publications in August 1957. [8] They acquired Mercury Publications, Inc which published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Science & Mechanics Publishing which published Radio-TV Experimenter magazine. Science & Mechanics magazine was started by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 and stayed in print until 1972.
Ziff-Davis Publishing would develop two categories of magazines; the professional magazine such as Radio & Television News and the leisure time magazines like Popular Photography . In October 1954, Popular Electronics was created for the hobbyist market. It became the largest selling electronics magazine, 250,000 copies per month by 1957 and 450,000 copies by 1965. Initially Oliver Read was the editor of both Radio & Television News and Popular Electronics. Soon Oliver P. Ferrell took over as editor of Popular Electronics and Wm. A. Stocklin as editor of Radio & Television News.
The title Radio & TV News was changed Electronics World in May 1959 to reflect the expanding field of electronics. The feature stories were often on the newest technology and at a sophisticated level. Some examples: "Melting Silicon for Semiconductors" (May 1959), "Computer Arithmetic Circuits" (June 1961), and "Binary Computer Codes and ASCII" (July 1964.) There were also articles on audio and video consumer electronics, communications systems, automotive and industrial electronics.
In 1960, most of the consumer audio, radio and television devices used vacuum tubes. These sets required frequent repair so there was a Radio/TV repair shop in every neighborhood. Electronics World had a section devoted to repair and John T. Frye wrote a monthly column, "Mac's Service Shop". A large portion of the advertisements were directed at the service industry.
The April 1963 issue has a 6 page article, "Electronics in Banking", that explains in detail how the magnetic numbers on the bottom of checks would be read into computers. It also has the first article written by Don Lancaster, "Solid-State 3-Channel Color Organ".
By 1970 the experimenter articles in Popular Electronics were at the same level as the articles in Electronics World. Popular Electronics had over twice the readership so in January 1972 Electronics World was merged with Popular Electronics. [9] The changes in the editorial staff during this time induced many of their authors to start writing for their competitor, Radio-Electronics .
In September 1973 Radio Electronics published Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter, a low cost video display. In July 1974 Radio Electronics published the Mark-8 Personal Minicomputer based on the Intel 8008 processor. The editors of Popular Electronics needed a computer project so they selected Ed Robert's Altair 8800 computer based on the improved Intel 8080 processor. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics had the Altair computer on the cover.
Hugo Gernsback was an American editor and magazine publisher whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the "Hugos".
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines. According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. It was the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.
If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn.
Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.
Thomas O'Conor Sloane was an American scientist, inventor, author, editor, educator, and linguist, perhaps best known for writing The Standard Electrical Dictionary and as the editor of Scientific American, from 1886 to 1896 and the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, from 1929 to 1938.
Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. Founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology- and health-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, internet connectivity services, gaming and entertainment brands, and cybersecurity and martech tools. Previously, the company was predominantly a publisher of hobbyist magazines.
Popular Electronics was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine". In April 1957, Ziff-Davis reported an average net paid circulation of 240,151 copies. Popular Electronics was published until October 1982 when, in November 1982, Ziff-Davis launched a successor magazine, Computers & Electronics. During its last year of publication by Ziff-Davis, Popular Electronics reported an average monthly circulation of 409,344 copies. The title was sold to Gernsback Publications, and their Hands-On Electronics magazine was renamed to Popular Electronics in February 1989, and published until December 1999. The Popular Electronics trademark was then acquired by John August Media, who revived the magazine, the digital edition of which is hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com, along with sister titles, Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Astronomy.
PC Magazine is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues as of 2024.
Wonder Stories was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, when his media company Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt. Within a few months of the bankruptcy, Gernsback launched three new magazines: Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly.
Daniel Meyer was the founder and president Southwest Technical Products Corporation. He was born in New Braunfels, Texas, and raised in San Marcos, Texas, where he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics in 1957 from Southwest Texas State. After college he married Helen Wentz, moved to San Antonio and became a research engineer in the electrical engineering department of Southwest Research Institute.
The TV Typewriter is a video terminal that could display two pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television set. The design, by Don Lancaster, appeared on the cover of Radio-Electronics magazine in September 1973.
WRNY was a New York City AM radio station that began operating in 1925. It was started by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company to promote his radio and science magazines. Starting in August 1928, WRNY was one of the first stations to make regularly scheduled experimental television broadcasts. Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt in early 1929 and the station was purchased by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to promote aviation. WRNY was deleted in 1934, as part of a consolidation on its shared frequency by surviving station WHN.
Fantastic Adventures was an American pulp fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1953 by Ziff-Davis. It was initially edited by Raymond A. Palmer, who was also the editor of Amazing Stories, Ziff-Davis's other science fiction title. The first nine issues were in bedsheet format, but in June 1940 the magazine switched to a standard pulp size. It was almost cancelled at the end of 1940, but the October 1940 issue enjoyed unexpectedly good sales, helped by a strong cover by J. Allen St. John for Robert Moore Williams' Jongor of Lost Land. By May 1941 the magazine was on a regular monthly schedule. Historians of science fiction consider that Palmer was unable to maintain a consistently high standard of fiction, but Fantastic Adventures soon developed a reputation for light-hearted and whimsical stories. Much of the material was written by a small group of writers under both their own names and house names. The cover art, like those of many other pulps of the era, focused on beautiful women in melodramatic action scenes. One regular cover artist was H.W. McCauley, whose glamorous "MacGirl" covers were popular with the readers, though the emphasis on depictions of attractive and often partly clothed women did draw some objections.
Experimenter Publishing was an American media company founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1915. The first magazine was The Electrical Experimenter (1913–1931) and the most notable magazines were Radio News (1919–1985) and Amazing Stories (1926–2005). Their radio station, WRNY, began broadcasting experimental television in 1928. In early 1929 the company was forced into bankruptcy and the Gernsback brothers lost control of Experimenter Publishing. The magazines did not miss an issue and were quickly sold to another publisher. The Gernsbacks promptly started new magazines to compete with their former ones.
Hands-On Electronics was an electronics hobbyist magazine published by Gernsback Publications in the United States from 1980 to 1989.
The Electrical Experimenter was an American technical science magazine that was published monthly. It was established in May 1913, as the successor to Modern Electrics, a combination of a magazine and mail-order catalog that had been published by Hugo Gernsback starting in 1908. The Electrical Experimenter continued from May 1913 to July 1920 under that name, focusing on scientific articles about radio, and continued with a broader focus as Science and Invention until August 1931.
Radio-Electronics was an American electronics magazine that was published under various titles from 1929 to 2003. Hugo Gernsback, sometimes called the father of science fiction, started it as Radio-Craft in July 1929. The title was changed to Radio-Electronics in October 1948 and again to Electronics Now in July 1992. In January 2000 it was merged with Gernsback's Popular Electronics to become Poptronics. Gernsback Publications ceased operations in December 2002 and the January 2003 issue was the last. Over the years, Radio-Electronics featured audio, radio, television and computer technology. The most notable articles were the TV Typewriter and the Mark-8 computer. These two issues are considered milestones in the home computer revolution.
Scientific Detective Monthly was a pulp magazine that published fifteen issues beginning in January 1930. It was launched by Hugo Gernsback as part of his second venture into science-fiction magazine publishing, and was intended to focus on detective and mystery stories with a scientific element. Many of the stories involved contemporary science without any imaginative elements—for example, a story in the first issue turned on the use of a bolometer to detect a black girl blushing—but there were also one or two science fiction stories in every issue.
Science-fiction and fantasy magazines began to be published in the United States in the 1920s. Stories with science-fiction themes had been appearing for decades in pulp magazines such as Argosy, but there were no magazines that specialized in a single genre until 1915, when Street & Smith, one of the major pulp publishers, brought out Detective Story Magazine. The first magazine to focus solely on fantasy and horror was Weird Tales, which was launched in 1923, and established itself as the leading weird fiction magazine over the next two decades; writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard became regular contributors. In 1926 Weird Tales was joined by Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback; Amazing printed only science fiction, and no fantasy. Gernsback included a letter column in Amazing Stories, and this led to the creation of organized science-fiction fandom, as fans contacted each other using the addresses published with the letters. Gernsback wanted the fiction he printed to be scientifically accurate, and educational, as well as entertaining, but found it difficult to obtain stories that met his goals; he printed "The Moon Pool" by Abraham Merritt in 1927, despite it being completely unscientific. Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, but quickly started several new magazines. Wonder Stories, one of Gernsback's titles, was edited by David Lasser, who worked to improve the quality of the fiction he received. Another early competitor was Astounding Stories of Super-Science, which appeared in 1930, edited by Harry Bates, but Bates printed only the most basic adventure stories with minimal scientific content, and little of the material from his era is now remembered.
Amazing Stories Quarterly was a U.S. science fiction pulp magazine that was published between 1928 and 1934. It was launched by Hugo Gernsback as a companion to his Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, which had begun publishing in April 1926. Amazing Stories had been successful enough for Gernsback to try a single issue of an Amazing Stories Annual in 1927, which had sold well, and he decided to follow it up with a quarterly magazine. The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly was dated Winter 1928 and carried a reprint of the 1899 version of H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes. Gernsback's policy of running a novel in each issue was popular with his readership, though the choice of Wells' novel was less so. Over the next five issues, only one more reprint appeared: Gernsback's own novel Ralph 124C 41+, in the Winter 1929 issue. Gernsback went bankrupt in early 1929, and lost control of both Amazing Stories and Amazing Stories Quarterly; associate editor T. O'Conor Sloane then took over as editor. The magazine began to run into financial difficulties in 1932, and the schedule became irregular; the last issue was dated Fall 1934.
