50 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



THE FUTURE OF POPULAR SCIENCE 

 John C. Hessler, James Millikin University 



1. Meaning of Popular Science. — I realize that my subject, 

 "Popular Science," has had some unpleasant associations in 

 the recent past, but I am tempted to use it to bring before the 

 State Academy of Science, in the few minutes allotted me, 

 some thoughts on the science situation in this country, espe- 

 cially on the teaching of science in our schools, colleges and 

 universities. If I can suggest to you that this country may 

 have and should have a science which is popular, that is, for 

 the masses, as well as one which is technical, that is, for the ex- 

 perts, I may not be subject to the sneers of the sober man of 

 science nor will he feel that my suggestions are, of necessity, 

 fit only for the limbo of lost ideas. 



2. Popular Science of the Past Generation. — The year 

 1890 may be taken roughly as the beginning of the laboratory 

 period in American high schools, especially in the Central 

 West. As we think of the two preceding decades (1870- 

 1890), years in which men as old as the speaker, or older, 

 probably received their first inspiration to engage in science 

 work or teaching, we remember them as the "wonder years 

 of science." They were "wonder years" because of the wide- 

 mouthed, eager wonder of so many of our people for scientific 

 discoveries. The Philadelphia Exposition, with its early tel- 

 ephone and arc light, the untold, apparently illimitable extent 

 to which discovery might go, the bicycle and the prophecy, as 

 yet so dim, of the automobile and the aeroplane, gave to the 

 professional lecturer a profitable field. Crowds went to hear 

 lectures by "Professor" Blank on the "Wonders of Electricity" 

 or the "Little Devils of Chemistry." Here static machines 

 turned rapidly with gratifying zips of electric discharge, 

 Ruhmkorff coils hissed and buzzed, Crookes tubes fluoresced 

 in endless play of color. Or mysterious rubber bags, with 

 weights upon them, delivered the wonderful gases of the oxy- 

 hydrogen flame, liquids that were red were changed, in a 

 twinkling, to blue, and then turned back to red again by the 

 addition of colorless water. Specks of a white powder swelled 

 up, when ignited, to an enormous bulk, while a great, bulky 

 amalgam shrank to a droplet of liquid mercury. And when 



