JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post    

Here’s a very unusual bit that I found deep in the a volume of the great Nature magazine, for July 9, 1896.  There were only 23 pages of text for the standard issue, with this one carrying eight very full pages of advertisements.  The issue is full of the expected–and then there was this, a great unexpected ad:

Nature was a semi-popular magazine for the general sciences in the great Victorian age, so it is quite possible that a generalist/not-necessarily-science type woud place an ad in it. The “magic” part is odd, though the “mechanical novelties” part of it makes a lot of sense.  The other ads are lovely and engrossing and cover a wide spectrum of what teh active scientific mind in 1896 might want: x-ray tubes (for the earth-shatteringly new discovery of just months earlier), rock and mineral specimens, live specimens for dissection, galvanometers, descriptions of courses for science schools, mathematical instruments, and so on.  It would be a high privilege to see teh store associated with any one of these advertisements.