Distillations magazine

Designers of the 1950s took up the atom and turned it into a fashion icon.

In the early 20th century, chemists prophesied a future that seemed both surreal and somehow within reach.

For decades science journalists peacefully worked their beat. But trouble came to their ostensibly objective world. How did science writers get caught in the crossfire of the culture wars?

The ancestors of today’s CSI shows can be found between the covers of 20th-century detective stories.

Would we understand our world differently if Charles Darwin had never written On the Origin of Species?

Death Salon founder Megan Rosenbloom tells us what a good death means to her.

The rise of synthetic color and the scientists and designers who tried to save society from itself.

Fancy some alchemical recipes from 15th-century Italy?

How hard can it be to make a gemstone? Plenty hard. People have been trying for almost 2,000 years, but success finally beckoned in 19th-century France.

For thousands of years silk symbolized wealth and style. But in the 1930s DuPont gave Americans the next best thing.

Do you think of poison ivy as a scurrilous weed to be avoided at all costs? Think again! There was a time when the daring and curious found promise in poison ivy and its rash-inducing relatives.

As Coca-Cola’s popularity spread in the United States in the 1920s, rabbis around the country asked, is Coke kosher?

Neon is a dull and invisible gas until it’s trapped in a tube and zapped with electricity. Literally pulled out of thin air, it became a symbol of progress and an essential component of the electronic age.

In the 1950s comic books took Mexico’s youth by storm. But alongside familiar superhuman avengers were other kinds of heroes: real-life chemists.

Before becoming a synonym for cinema, celluloid was used imitate expensive materials like ivory, tortoiseshell, and linen.

A 1904 caricature from Vanity Fair is a striking example of the role images played in creating the Marie Curie myth.

Observing as experts investigate whether La Bella Principessa is in fact the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

Mining magazines, newspapers, comic books, and movies to catch a glimpse of science as imagined by earlier generations.