Popular Electronics Magazine 1954 to 1982

The issue that Paul Allen took running to Bill Gates at Harvard: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/70s/1...

Some really amazing stuff in there, it brings back very fond memories .. I'm particularly enamored of the language to be found describing the Cyclops project in this issue, page 29:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/70s/1...

"Consider also the possibility of using Cyclops in conjunction with the FEBRUARY 1975 Altair 80 Minicomputer (POPULAR ELECTRONICS, January 1975). The combination could be used to build a security system that would operate on the basis of a person's appearance. This approach also opens up a brand new and exciting area for the advanced experimenter -a digital computer that has "vision." For example, the Cyclops /Altair combination, with 256 independent inputs /outputs could be the basis for a robot that could be programmed to do a number of things, while also being able to "see" its environment and make any necessary corrections in its actions."

Heady and prophetic stuff!

This one changed my life: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/70s/1...

That is the one with the Altair 8800 on the cover. It was cool and all to dial up the mainframe with the acoustic modem but man, to actually own the computer and no one else could use it or tell you what to do with it? What would someone do with so much power! :-)

Popular Mechanics and Popular Science are both available as well.

Popular Science 1872-2009: http://books.google.com/books?id=2CgDAAAAMBAJ

Popular Mechanics 1905-2005: http://books.google.com/books?id=RdMDAAAAMBAJ

Oh, I love this stuff! I'm surprised it isn't housed at archive.org, however. Seems totally up Jason Scott's alley.

Google Books has them up to 2009 or so. It's relatively easy to rip them from there too.

I also love looking at the adverts in these magazines. Very, very different to the online adverts. Uber cool!