Abstract:By analyzing the contests that appeared in Popular Science Monthly from 1918 to 1938, this article discusses the rhetoric of public engagement with technological innovation, and the magazine's construction of a readership community. A close analysis of these contests reveals a burgeoning participatory culture within the context of the popularization of science and technology in the mass-circulation press of early twentieth-century America. Significantly, the contests frame their public as an active participant… Show more
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