8 replies to this topic

[Glassthrower]

Recently I acquired a lot of old Sky and Telescope magazines from the late 1950's to the mid 1970's. I toyed around with the idea of reselling them for a little profit, and I even listed a handful of them in the Shop and Swap briefly. But then my bibliophile instinct took over and I decided to keep them as a permanent part of my astro bookshelf.

At any rate, here is what I am getting at....These old magazines are packed with advertisements from Unitron, Edmunds, Criterion, Cave, Jaegers, UO, and dozens of others. These ads are a great source of information and specifications on some of the more obscure vintage accessories floating around on the used market. Already I have used these magazines to identify a couple of mystery items I have run across, both on the web and in my own gear inventory. Those of you who have some of these older magazines laying around know exactly what I am talking about and this is not a newsflash. But, I have a good scanner and I was thinking about scanning some of these ads into .jpg format to keep for my own use. If anyone else is interested in seeing some them, PM me for info. This is not a fishing attempt to sell magazines or prints, but rather an attempt to share a valuable resource of out-of-print information about collectible scopes for scholarly purposes.

Clear dark skies...

MikeG

PS - these magazines are great to look at. Not many gear "reviews" in the sense we are used to, but a lot more scientific articles than current astro magazines. The feel of the magazine is much more collegiate and academic.

[microbes]

I picked up a couple of S&T mags from 1959. Very cool ads, but what blows me away away is how much astrophotography has advanced in less than 50 years. Deep space shots are better to a fairly good degree now, but the real advances are in imaging planets. Being able to stack images has made it so that even with really cheap equipment you can get shots of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn that blow away what the big observatories were doing back then.

[Selecter]

what I love is teh artwork and feel. everything in 1956~1965 o so just had a certain feel to it, a style. Certanly true for old S and T's as well.

you'd have to scan them at huge file sizes to be usable. I'm thinking 200+dpi 1 bit for pages just for text with no pix.

[tbourg]

I believe I enjoyed the Unitron adds in Sky and Telescope the most. They ran a series in the 60s where each month they highlighted a constellation and told which objects in it were good in each size Unitron. For instance, Scorpius might be the constellation of the month and they would have a paragraph on observing it with their 1.6", 2.4", then one with their 3" and then their 4". The art work was good, too, if I remember correctly.

Old catalogs were fun. I remember ANRA, later known as Optical Craftsmen, did something similar to Unitron with their scopes. Each size scope had a run down of what the observer could see. I especially remember their reports on Jupiter where they gave the number of belts one could see, etc. Once again, though, the Unitron catalogs were the best. They had a lot of observing information and great photos.

Those were the days.

Clear skies.

Tom B.

[Jae]

I had a full set of S&T and some Astronomy but then my basement flooded. I didn't have a chance to put them up in book shelves as planned so....a bummer. Worse was my Leicaflex SL my dad bought in '69 for me got hit too....

[photonovore]

Not many gear "reviews" in the sense we are used to, but a lot more scientific articles than current astro magazines. The feel of the magazine is much more collegiate and academic.

Yeh, S&T has massively dumbed down in the last 30 years. This began shortly after the "Astronomy" began outselling S&T in the early 80's by playing to the middle of the bell curve instead of the fringe. Naturally, S&T followed the money and we got what we have today---two splashy sensationalistic astronomy magazines written for 8th graders and for all intents and purposes edited by the advertising department. S&T is still the best though...talking maybe *10th* grade.

But's this is everywhere...Discover is utter fluff, Popular Mechanics puts killer asteriods on it's cover and Popular Science puts cars on theirs! (seriously!) Even Scientific American has popularized it's content, though it's still more in-depth than anything else out there in the mainstream science media, including S&T. (I know because they have covered the same stories recently and Sci-Am actually did a more thorough job.)

Oh well, beggars can't be choosers, mmm ?

[refractory]

And you wonder why a third of our scientists and engineers come from other countries? I guess they didn't have Playstations. Didn't something akin to this happen to the ancient Romans? Fat and happy Eloi. Wonder when the Morlocks will start smelling a smorgasbord....

With crapola go-to telescopes and such mags the youth will be fast bored with stodgy middle-ager astronomy. But this has all been noted on CN before. Arcades for brains.

Jess Tauber

'Don't let your kids NEAR video games'

[Selecter]

well, knowledge is not rewarded by and large. Hitting 130 RBIS is. society will go where the rewards are. What matters today is how many tickets you can sell.

and magazines are so far out of date you may as well be writing on stone. But people still buy them. When Radio came out, the newspapers were doomed. When TV came out, radio was doomed.

they all just assume new positions in the world and move on. But I doubt that 1 kid in 10000 cares about S&T in any form.
Go look at your public school system which is now a babysitter to make sure that both parents can and have to work for the man and be gone from the house 10 hours a day to serve corporate america. Thats where the problem is. We've been putting something else before our kids.

when society makes knowledge rewarding again, we will have smarter kids.

[Glassthrower]

Well said Mardi, Jess and Selecter. I agree 100%.

Clear dark skies...

MikeG