135th Anniversary—The History of POWER magazine

From the very beginning, POWER has kept editorial pace with fast-developing technology and a market strongly influenced by economic growth. As was common for early business magazines, POWER has been an outlet for technical content, but it has also reflected the proliferation of new products, scientific advances, and a large volume of news. For more on POWER magazine's history, see "The History of POWER is the History of Power."

Here are compelling excerpts from the magazine's voluminous pages over the 14 decades it has been published: "135th Anniversary-Excerpts from the pages of POWER (SLIDESHOW)."

An unusual-and spectacular-strategy developed by POWER's editors over the years was the "humanizing" of engineering. As one editor in 1997 noted, "First the editors created a fictional George Edwards character whose anecdotes and tips provided readers with engineering instruction wrapped in a friendly, small-town vernacular. This proved so successful that it was followed by a somewhat similar The Old Chief character, another down-to-earth feature that enjoyed solid popularity." But POWER's true "mascot" emerged in 1947, when Associate Editor Steve Elonka invented a Marmaduke Surfaceblow fictional series that was to run some four hundred episodes. Read more about Marmaduke in our special 135th anniversary supplement: "Engineering a Legacy: Marmaduke Surfaceblow."

In 2007, POWER's editors combed through the archives and published a series titled "This Month in POWER," which highlights specific articles from that month. From POWER's archives, here's "This Month in POWER" for October.