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The English Mechanic was one of the most successful of all nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British commercial periodicals aimed specifically at artisanal, 'practical' and scientific readers. Built on the example of the Mechanics' Magazine and similar cheap technical serials of the 1820s and 1830s, the English Mechanic and World of Science enjoyed a huge circulation (reaching an estimated thirty thousand in 1870) and within a decade of its launch in 1865 it had absorbed many of its rivals. For a penny, readers could digest articles explaining new inventions and scientific theories, 'practical hints and useful recipes', lists of patents, book reviews, advertisements, readers' notes and queries and a correspondence column that became legendary for staging fiery exchanges, usually between a regular group of pseudonymous writers, over such topics as the flat earth, electricity, screw cutting and spiritualism. It became essential reading for several generations of science and engineering students, including the physicist Oliver Lodge, who recalled that in his youth an issue of the English Mechanic inspired him to start conducting scientific experiments at home.
Nearly two decades ago, Bill Brock suggested of the English Mechanic that 'a serious content analysis of the complete file would probably throw important new light on the reception, adaptation and adoption of all the major, and many minor (e.g. the sewing machine) Victorian and Edwardian technological inventions that had important social implications' (in A. J. Meadows (ed.), The Development of Science Publishing in Europe (Amsterdam, 1980), p. 114). Brock's...