I just picked up a 1957-2009 collection of a DIY magazine called ‘Workbench’ http://www.woodsmith.com/workbench-back-issue-dvd.php which is now (I think) called “My Home My Style” http://www.myhomemystyle.com
It has been FASCINATING poring over issues from the 50’s through the 1980 (which is where I’m up to.) The magazine was originally called “Profitable Hobbies” which began in 1950-ish http://blog.modernmechanix.com/issue/?pubname=ProfitableHobbies&pubdate=3-1950 my collection starts in 1957. It was always full of ‘make money doing X’ ads, (apparently according to the ads, thousands and thousands of folks needed their saws sharpened and according to Tom McCahill, their appliances repaired, and Victor Mason started going on about his mysterious money-making process in the late 50’s http://phil-are-go.blogspot.com/2014/07/victor-b-mason-mysterious-man-of.html ) But reading the articles through the 60s into the 70’s I realized that simultaneously, they discovered ‘women’ in about 1971, and they dumbed down the ‘womens’ content at about the same time. Up until round 1974 or so the magazine had regular feature called ‘Women’s Page’ which had articles devoted to ‘women’s projects’; often small decorative things. However, they often referred to using regular shop tools (‘Use the lathe to create…cut out the forms on a jig saw” (what we’d now call a scroll saw) the scale of the projects were smaller, but the skills needed were the same as for men. As the magazine adapted for the women’s liberation movement of the 70s the scale of the projects were larger, but the tools skills needed were lesser. (‘Cut the boards to length with a hand saw and nail them together’) Kind of jarring when you go thorough it all at once. Also from about 1975 on the magazine had regular features about energy conservation and solar power including multiple articles on passive solar heating and earth-insulated homes, and by the late 70's a regular column about energy conservation and solar power. Also we thought trash compactors were going to solve our landfill problems :-/ I expect that to vanish as I get into the 80’s as we forgot all that stuff. Weird trip through history. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/stratalist-ot. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
