Things of Science was an educational program launched by the nonprofit news syndicate
Science Service in November 1940. The program consisted of a series of kits available by
subscription
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century. It ...
and sent by mail monthly. The program continued until 1989. , there is no mention of the program or its archives on the website of the Society for Science & the Public, which succeeded the old Science Service organization.
Each month, thousands of subscribers received a small blue box about the size of a
videocassette containing some material such as nylon thread or dinosaur bones. The box contained a yellow booklet explaining the topic for that month, along with the pieces and supplies needed to cover the topic. Some kits would teach about a specific topic, such as
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal i ...
,
static electricity
Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material. The charge remains until it can move away by an electric current or electrical discharge. The word "static" is used to differentiate it from electric ...
,
mechanical linkages,
nonwoven fabric
Nonwoven fabric or non-woven fabric is a fabric-like material made from staple fibre (short) and long fibres (continuous long), bonded together by chemical, mechanical, heat or solvent treatment. The term is used in the textile manufacturing in ...
s,
electroplating
Electroplating, also known as electrochemical deposition or electrodeposition, is a process for producing a metal coating on a solid substrate through the redox, reduction of cations of that metal by means of a direct current, direct electric cur ...
, or
optical illusions. Other kits would provide parts to build items such as a small
spectrograph
An optical spectrometer (spectrophotometer, spectrograph or spectroscope) is an instrument used to measure properties of light over a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically used in spectroscopic analysis to identify mate ...
,
telescope
A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...
, or
pinhole camera
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens but with a tiny aperture (the so-called ''Pinhole (optics), pinhole'')—effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through the aperture and projects a ...
. In addition to the monthly subscription, some kits were available for individual purchase, such as a "soilless gardening" unit which provided seeds, plant food, and instructions in
hydroponics
Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of #Passive sub-irrigation, hydroculture which involves growing plants, usually crops or medicinal plants, without soil, by using water-based mineral Plant nutrition, nutrient Solution (chemi ...
. Some kits contained basic materials for simple experiments in psychology.
The modest annual subscription price ($5 in the 1960s) covered the cost of printing and postage. The instructions were written by Science Service staff, and the kit materials were donated by various companies.
The Things of Science Club was started by Watson Davis, editor-in-chief of Science Service, because editors served by the service often asked for samples of the things the syndicate wrote about. The initial focus of the program was newspaper editors, but it soon shifted to young people. By 1946 the Science Service estimated that half of its subscribers were school groups and science clubs, and the other half were individuals. Membership in the club was limited to a few thousand because some of the "things", such as dinosaur bones, were hard to come by.
References
{{reflist
External links
Rediscovering Things of Science— includes a partial list of the kits
Things of Science— scans of the instruction booklets for many of the kits
Things of Science— article in ''Make'' magazine
Society for Science & the Public
Science education