Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 10
TAKING SCIENCE TO THE MARKETPLACE:
EXAMPLES OF SCIENCE SERVICE'S PRESENTATION OF
CHEMISTRY DURING THE 1930s
Marcel C. LaFollette
338 Eighth Street, S.E., Washington, DC 20003-2109,U.S.A.
scicompol@aol.com
During the 1930s, Science Service, a not-for-profit independent news
organization, promulgated an approach to popularizing science which
favored audience preferences over scientific agendas and attended to
industry as well as academic research interests. Stories about chemistry
and chemists harmonized well with Science Service's emphasis on
research utility and relevance. This chapter describes examples from
syndicated news reports, radio broadcasts, a newspaper series called
'Fabrics of the Future', and a department store exhibit on chemistry that
traveled through the United States in 1939-40.
1. Introduction
In 1936, science journalist Frank Thone declared to members of the
American Association for Adult Education that their fellow citizens were
“as eager as St. Paul's Athenians to hear some new thing” about science
but they preferred flexibility to pontification.
1
His explication foreshad-
owed today's world of ubiquitous, portable communications devices:
Their Agora is the daily newspaper. It may be a less sociable institution
than the Athenian market-place or the Victorian lecture-hall, but it is a
1
Frank Thone, 'The Press as an Agency for the Diffusion of Science', text of a speech
to the American Association for Adult Education, May 21, 1936, p. 2; Smithsonian
Institution Archives, Record Unit 7091 (hereafter cited as 'SIA RU7091'), Box 4,
Folder 2.
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