Periodicals of the 20th Century

A few weeks back I was noting the volumes of Omni Magazine. Omni Magazine was a publication about Science, Technology, Science Fiction, the Mind, Computer, UFO’s, Robotics, and beyond. It first began printing in 1978. The covers were captivating. On one, you might find a jockey riding a horse that has a one-hundred dollar bill printed on it:

As you can see, this cover is from the May 1989 edition. I wondered why there was a horse on the cover. In May 1989, American Jockey Chris Antley ended a record of 64 consecutive winning days on the race-track. Antley made headlines as a jockey by winning the Kentucky Derby in 1991 and 1999 (on horses ‘Strike the Gold’ and ‘Charistmatic’, respectively). Could that be Mr. Antley and Strike the Gold depicted on the cover of Omni?

On another Omni, I found an insect crouched on a leaf, but on second glance noted that the insect was made entirely of computer parts. 

Not only were the cover illustrations unique, but the titles and headlines were cleverly worded. They got my attention in the way that they sounded playfully cutting edge, but of the 80’s, early 90’s computer-science-mixed-with-popular-culture tone. For me, that tone was made appealing from movies such as Tron, Back to the Future 2, the neon illustrations of Dire Strait’s “I Want My MTV” video, and much more.

A futuristic composition, which has that dated feel to it, was a cover from June 1990. An infant child is hovering above earth’s atmosphere, floating on a robe, with a computer keyboard in front of her and her finger delicately posed over what I suspect is the F10 key.

So when I was dallying through the pages, I enjoyed reading tidbits from the articles. Each publication provided a UFO update, which, for Star Trek fans like myself, was delightful. 

A quote from the update reads:

“Thirty years ago the Soviets gave the world a new word for “space traveler”: kosmonavt, Anglicized as cosmonaut. They are now trying to do it again with the word enlonavt, only this time the travelers are not human. The enlonavts (or UFOnauts, as we would say) are aliens from space. And they’ve landed in the USSR.

      ‘Although the Soviets have come to the UFO arena fairly late in the game, they are making up for lost time. Take the story recently publicized around the world by the Soviet news agency Tass. This past October (1989), the agency announced, scientists confirmed the arrival of 9-to 12-foot -tall extraterrestrials with tiny heads. The aliens allegedly strolled around a park in the city of Voronezh.

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Because the magazine seemed to be aimed at science and science-technology enthusiasts, the pages were rich with early cell phone, fax machine, Tandy computer, and Compuserve advertisements. A smart phone from “Sharp”:

A cell phone from “Panasonic”:

A Tandy Computer from 1989:

and an endorsement for the old online provider and technology computer Compuserve:

All advertisements shown above came out of volumes 11-12 available here at the library. A lasting thought from Omni:

Having recently come across many of the Inland Printer volumes here at Prelinger Library, one volume’s images and ads piqued my curiosities. In Volume 85 from 1930, the selected images are rich in color and content. According to the back page of each issue, Inland Printer professed itself as “The Leading Business and Technology Journal of the World in Printing and Allied Industries” (1930)

Inland Printer is a magazine that has articles about printing, typing, engraving, “and other allied industries”. It also has many advertisements, like the one below. 

In the watercolor print above, in volume 85, I particularly enjoyed the soft complimentary colors of purple and green, and how the light falls into the picture from the right, highlighting not only the water and mist, but the stalks of the trees on the left. I was also impressed by the page’s color quality, being 82 years old. 

Another endorsement stood out to me, this one being for “The Associated Business Papers, Inc.”. Its lyrical title to the advertisement and nautical, eye-catching block print caught my eye. See below for the title, image, and excerpt of text.

Have you ever read any writing by the author Elmer Ellsworth, Jr.? In this same volume, he wrote an article titled “Lively Lettering as One Medium for Making Typography Laugh, Sing, and Dance”.

A few examples of what he means: 

After a few months hiatus, a periodical has flown its way into this blog. It’s Uranium Magazine, these scans are from the fifth and sixth volume of 1958 through 1959. Uranium Magazine was published out of Denver during the era of uranium mining. The pie chart below highlights the states where uranium was most commonly extracted from. 

And the scans below of an issue focusing on Canada’s uranium mining caught my eye, particularly the close-up of editor Henry Hough’s curling tam on the cover, and the uranium mine map of Canada below. 

Done delightfully in shifty text, by artist Silvia Kolbowski, was a re-presentation of a Dylan tune,  ’Ballad of a Thin Man’. Excerpt below:

from the Winter 2008 run of October journal

from Radio Broadcast, edition below

New England born Horace Silver, featured in October 1966’s run of “Jazz Journal”:

an excerpt, written by Martin Williams.

Horace!

an article about George Romney’s bid for president from the May-June 1967 print of Fact Magazine. The first few paragraphs of the article are re-presented below. The author is Warren Boroson and the artist of the illustration’s name is forthcoming. 

One of the most interesting things I thought about this article was how it was so uncannily similar to what’s happening now. Apologies on focusing solely on the religious- but the artwork beckoned me to post this and the words that followed couldn’t be ignored.