Nature Pastcast, November 1869: The first issue of Nature
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2019
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year, Nature celebrates its 150th birthday. To mark this anniversary we’re rebroadcasting episodes from our PastCast series, highlighting key moments in the history of science.
In this episode, we’re heading back to 4 November 1869, when Nature’s story began. The first issue of the journal looked very different from the way it does now and, to the dismay of the editor, it was not immediately popular. In this podcast, we hear how Nature began, and how it became the journal it is today.
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Transcript
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| 0:27.8 | help.com. |
| 0:32.8 | This is the Nature Pastcast each month raiding Nature's archive and looking at key moments in science. |
| 0:39.3 | In this show, we rewind to Victorian London to hear about the very first issue of nature. |
| 0:51.7 | Nature, a weekly illustrated journal of science. |
| 0:56.6 | 4th November 1869. |
| 0:59.8 | Price four pence. |
| 1:05.2 | I find nature interesting because it is now such an iconic journal and I think it was not at all iconic |
| 1:17.0 | in its starting. Nature was initially intended quite differently from the publication it became. |
| 1:25.4 | The people who started it had great ambitions, |
| 1:28.8 | but they didn't foresee what science would become. |
| 1:37.3 | To the solid ground of nature trusts the mind which builds for I. |
| 1:43.2 | Wordsworth. |
| 1:44.5 | I'm Ruth Barton, and I'm a historian of science. |
| 1:48.7 | My major area of interest is science in Victorian England. |
| 1:55.1 | Nature was published in London on the 4th of November, 1869. |
| 2:02.2 | Someone who went back to look at nature, I think, would be surprised |
... |
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