much ado about not very much

One of my favourite magazines as a kid was the wonderful Meccano Magazine.



... over time Meccano Magazine became a general hobby magazine aimed at "boys of all ages". Aside from Meccano related articles, it also featured Hornby trains, Dinky Toys and other products of Meccano Ltd, plus a wide variety of general interest articles, including, engineering, aircraft, trains, modelling, camping, photography and philately. Commonwealth countries always featured strongly in articles as Meccano Ltd exported its products to these countries. (My bolding.)

The magazine was stuffed full of great stuff for growing boys, all sorts of engineering news and articles. In fact, I sometimes wonder if reading that gave me the idea to be an engineer. Certainly I was rapt each month in all the engineering stuff that I could only admire as a youngster.

For example, the contents of the June 1948 issue included:

* Mapping by Air
* A Fast Clyde Excursion Steamer
* How Does a Locomotive Safety Valve Work?
* The Little Men Who Sound the Hours (about an animated clock with figures that struck a bell)
* North Eastern 1621 (about a railway locomotive)
* Air News
* Books to Read
* Club and Branch News
* Competitions and Results
* Fireside Fun
* From our Readers
* New Meccano Models
* Model Building Competition
* On Road and Track
* Photography
* Railway Notes
* Stamp News

How's that for a great month's new reading for a young lad? And the advertisements included:

* stamps, lens hoods, model yachts, bicycles, training in radar, wireless and television, toffee, bicycle gears, air guns, chemistry sets, make your own radio!, cigarette cards ... all a boy could want and much much more.

What a great thing that was. Of course, we are well before computers, the Internet, mobile phones, SMS, iPods, Facebook, Twitter. This is even before we had a TV! I really loved the monthly read ... and which boy wouldn't? There is no such thing today, as far as I know. Seems a shame.

There is an awesome archive of the issues of the magazine here - whole copies in pdf form for years and years and years.

The Boys' Own Paper (BOP) was a major feature of my childhood.

It was, I now read, founded, in the late 19th century, with religious intentions, to keep us young lads from straying from the straight and narrow. Heh heh. Certainly, it was always filled by young lads with super-neat shorts, cycling off over the hills, fixed smiles on their faces. I think Biggles and that bunch were in the BOP, but I could be wrong.

There is an excellent article on the BOP here.

Once, in a feat of dexterity the like of which I have not been able to repeat, I bound a year's copies of the journal (I think it was a monthly). My binding was crude but effective. At the same time, I bound a year's issues of the Meccano Magazine (an excellent magazine, covering much, much more than that Meccano building stuff).

There are no such magazines to day - the Internet and television have taken over. I am old enough to huff and puff and wonder if this is a good thing.



The Meccano magazine was such an excellent production that I shall keep it for a blog of its own.