Lovingly scanned and OCR'd copy of The Scientific American Boy

Project Gutenberg is offering a complete 345-page scan of The Scientific American Boy, published in 1907. The book tells the fictional story of a group of adventurous and infinitely resourceful lads who embark on a campaign to explore "Willow Clump Island," a fantastic juvenile Eden that provides the boys with ample opportunities to test their boat-, tent-, surveying instrument-, bridge-, hut-, cabin-, ladder-, tree house-, heliograph-, water wheel-, windmill-, megaphone-, and combination lock-building skills.

It's also the good fortune of the gang that one of the boys nearly drowns in a swimming accident, because it gives their chaperone, the kindly "Uncle Ed" ("one of those rare men who take a great interest in boys and their affairs") a chance to demonstrate the art of artificial respiration on the unconscious boy.

My favorite part of the book is when the gang forms a secret society with a club pin in the shape of a beetle.

The only other charm our secret club afforded was the wearing of a mysterious club pin. It was a silver beetle, with the letter G engraved on the head and the letter B on the body, while down the center of the back was the letter I (see Fig. 187). In public we called ourselves the G. I. B.'s, but it was only the initiated members who knew that these letters were to be read backward, and, with the beetle on which they were engraved, signified the "Big Bugs." Of course, we had some secret signs and signals, a secret hand grasp, a peculiar whistle as a warning to run [used, perhaps, whenever Uncle Ed began to take too great an interest in the boys? -- M] another meaning "lie still," and a third signifying "all is well."

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Reader comment: Jared Buck says:

Just a comment about the Scientific American Boy book you linked to in
yesterday's Boing Boing -

Project Gutenberg does books in many diffeent genres, and among those are old issues of magazines such as Scientific American.  I have done a number of books for PG's Distributed Proofreaders, and if your readers would be interested in seeing what issues of the magazine we have done, I would ask them to look here. Search under "Scientific American" in the title field. We already have issues from the early 1890s and I myself am trying to work on an issue on SA that will eventually become a PG etext.

Glad you could give PG a little shout-out!

Jared Buck
Project Gutenberg Volunteer