Founded in 1872, Popular Science magazine’s focus was to bring science to the “educated layman.”  The journal featured articles by such famous scientists and inventors as Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur. In the midst of World War I, it is not surprising that the magazine’s cover image and

This surprising poster by Robert Wildhack incorporates the image of an avant-garde flying machine at the moment those machines are transforming from experimental vehicles into a twentieth-century reality. The struts and wings of the biplane glider provide the support for an adventurous young woman laying crosswise on the glider’s lower wings.

Alfred Charles Parker (1906-1985)|Mother and Daughter Skating, 1939|Cover tear sheet for Ladies’ Home Journal (February 1939)|Al Parker Collection, Dept. of Special Col., Washington University Libraries © by the Meredith Corporation Certain topics transcend generations in their ability to spark interest and debate. The dynamic of the mother-daughter relationship is one such subject. Currently, the cable

Howard V. Brown (1878-1945|Cover of Astounding Stories v. 14, # 2 (October 1934)   Imagine if you will, that it is 1938 and you are a movie set designer looking for visual inspirations for a film about to be shot at MGM studios. A portion of the story being made into

When seeking an inspiration for a new illustration, artists may sometimes re-address a successful image of their own or they may borrow a concept from other work that they admire. In 1962 Norman Rockwell created a poster design for the Stockbridge Massachusetts Library in honor of its Centennial Celebration. His inspiration appears to have been

March 25, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the fire that killed 146 workers of the Triangle Waist Company located at 23-29 Washington Place  and Greene Street (at the northern corner of Washington Square East) in New York City. Triangle occupied the top three floors of the ten-story building. The

Norman Rockwell’s Shadow Artist focuses the viewer’s gaze on a white-haired man and the novel shadow figure projected behind him. We witness this amusing scene as if seated behind three young onlookers. While we are not shown their faces, we understand that they are entertained. Accordingly, we remember our own

In the first decade of the 20th century American Suffragists paraded a lot. The archive of The New York Times has thousands of articles about various Suffragette marches and processions. Even so, the march this program chronicled was distinctive. Held in Washington, D. C., the parade of between 5,000 and

In New York City in January of 1893 the Church Temperance Society decided to abandon the various coffee houses they had been running. They instead dedicated their funds to operating a night lunch wagon that would serve hot food and beverages for working people on the street from 7:30 pm

The above title,  A Man’s World, typically means that men have been privileged—they might have had better pay, more prestigious jobs, or been aided in their climb by other men. But as we see in this John Falter cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post from 1947, sometimes a man’s world simply means