I recently completed my collection of this interesting series, some of which are surprisingly difficult to find, so I thought it was time to review the fifteen books that make the set and the history of how they came to exist. Although they were all published in the 1960’s their genesis was back in the 1940’s with two ‘quarterly’ periodicals also published by Penguin; Science News which ran to fifty four volumes from June 1946 to March 1960 and New Biology which had thirty one volumes from July 1945 to January 1960. As you can see from the date ranges, although these were theoretically quarterly, in practice only Science News managed anything like a volume every three months, in fact there was a gap of nineteen months between New Biology 1 and volume 2. These books each contained various articles covering a wide range of scientific advances written by scientists at a level where the interested layman wouldn’t feel intimidated but detailed enough to be of interest to the scientific community. By 1960 though Penguin Books were getting out of the periodicals business, however there was still seen to be a need for something like Science News and New Biology so Penguin Science Survey was born the following year.

1961 The Specials

Science News and New Biology had their own series codes within Penguin Books but as those had come to an end a new home was needed. The logical place was within the Pelican imprint which was well established as the main factual part of Penguin Books output and the 1961 volumes were therefore planned to go there. Both books have the Pelican logo internally and volume 1 even has a number in the Pelican range A526 (which was re-assigned to The Living Brain by W. Grey Walter published August 1961) but for some reason very late in the day it was decided they should be Penguin Specials and came out as S193 and S194 in June 1961 in what looks like a hasty rebinding with laminated thin card covers unlike anything else from Penguin at the time.

Volume 1 replaced Science News and covers such diverse subjects as elementary particles, The US space plan, geophysics, the development of nuclear weapons and several other topics. Each article is around twenty pages long and there are a dozen in total along with a preface by the editor Arthur Garrett and a section on units and constants. Volume 2 is the equivalent of New Biology and has fifteen articles ranging from smoking and cancer of the lung (an article well ahead of its time), world food production, the life of viruses, the cockroach, the brain of the octopus, etc. again these are normally around twenty pages long each and there is also a preface by the joint editors S.A. Barnett and Anne McLaren. Both volumes also have numerous line drawings within the text and a section of black and white photographic plates in the middle of the book. Having created this template in these volumes it was largely stuck to for the following years.

1963 A new home

There were no editions in 1962 and when they re-appeared in February 1963 they were oddly assigned to be part of the ‘main series’ with catalogue numbers 1924 and 1925 where they shared space with novels, travelogues, biographies and plays, they had also become A and B rather than 1 and 2 although A continued to be the equivalent of Science News with B covering New Biology with the same editors as in 1961. Volume A has amongst its eleven main essays a good article on optical astronomy by Patrick Moore and a fascinating piece on computers subtitled a progress review where the author describes an amazing IBM machine that could store a massive 100 million characters; which is several orders of magnitude less than an average mobile phone today. Roughly half of volume B is taken up with a series of articles linked under the heading ‘Matters of Life and Death’ which cover chromosomes, contraception, malformations and family planning. Also included in the rest of the book is a piece on tissue transplantation which was still in its early days, along with eight other essays.

1964 and 1965 A short period of stability

These two years continued the pattern of 1963 with the same editors and a wide spread of subjects covered. The books are still in the ‘main series’, which is where they would remain, and are assigned the following catalogue numbers 2043 and 2044 (April 1964) along with 2225 and 2226 (April 1965).

In 1964 subjects included elementary particles, Soviet space research, adhesion and a quirky short article entitled ‘How discoveries are made: a plea for intuition’ all in volume A, whilst volume B has life on other planets, the origin of man, learning a birds language, communication in bees amongst many other essays. In 1965 part A is split into three sections: Physical Research including superconductivity (still very relevant today), the physics of the brain, and automated spacecraft of the US. The second section is entitled Industrial Applications of Science and has diverse subjects such as Diamonds in industry, rubber, and supersonic aircraft. The final part is entitled Communications and has just two articles, the communication of information, and science on radio. Part B bounces all over the place from mental images, athletic physique, homosexuality, tranquillisers, and the yeasts of wine to other subjects equally intriguing.

1966 A missing book and a new title

Any collector looking for Penguin Science Survey A from 1966 will search in vain because it was never published. B did come out in March as number 2467 and it was joined, the same month, by Penguin Technology Survey 1966 (number 2439) which covered some of the same ground as Survey A would have been expected to do, it is also edited by the regular Survey A editor Arthur Garrett. This book is probably the one that interests me most with essays on the impact of electrical engineering, new methods of printing, computer aided design (remember this is 1966 so really surprising to see what feels like a new technology in use over fifty years ago) and a look forward to nuclear fusion reactors (which is still the case) along with other subjects. Science Survey B has a new editor, Anthony Allison, but apart from that little has changed. Like Technology Survey the subjects feel up to date including the challenge of insecticide resistance, two articles on fighting virus infections by differing means, and several more on the effects of temperature in biology and medicine.

1967 And then there was three

Any thoughts that the 1966 Penguin Technology Survey was a re-branding of Survey A which wasn’t done very well and left Survey B stranded was dispelled this year by the existence of three titles 2640 Penguin Technology Survey 1967 (April), 2687 Penguin Science Survey 1967 Biology (July) and 2688 Penguin Science Survey 1967 Physical Sciences (also July). The renaming of the surveys was presumably to make it more obvious what they covered rather than A or B and the same editors continued from the previous year along with Nicholas Valéry who took over what used to be Survey A and was now Physical Sciences.

Technology Survey has a good article on technological advances in Japan, something we would all become familiar with over the following decades and there are also a couple of excellent essays on technology in medicine but my favourite has to be the last one which deals with the problems of naming things as technology advances and is entitled “Let’s make up the words as we go along”. The Biology Survey is subtitled The Biology of Sex and all fifteen essays are concerned with some aspect of this subject including four on sex in the insect world, a couple on mammals in general and others including anthropology, and the x-chromosome. With technology now in its own volume what was Survey A is more restricted in its subject matter but this means it can look deeper into specific areas, instead of one article on space science which was the most you got up until now there are three, this better reflects the 1960’s Space Age fascination. There are also pieces on solar energy, detecting underground nuclear explosions (also a hot topic at the time) and high energy physics.

1968 The last hurrah

Technology Survey only lasted for two volumes and was gone after 1967. 1968 would be the final year of the Penguin Science Survey. 2840 Penguin Science Survey 1968 Biology and 2841 Penguin Science Survey 1968 Physical Sciences finally hit the bookshelves in November and had the same editors as in 1967. As with the previous year the Biology volume took one overarching subject, in this case photobiology, and the twelve papers look at all aspects of the effect of light in biology. From photochemisty, through photosynthesis, to the impact of light in controlling flowers, and on to bioluminescence with plants and animals producing their own light there is lots to get into in this book. Finally comes Physical Sciences, there are ten articles in this volume and several of these are still major paths of investigation today such as the worlds weather, superconductors, controlled nuclear fusion, and life in the universe.

The other Surveys

Somebody at Penguin obviously thought that the Science Surveys were a good idea and decided to expand the concept because in April 1965 there appeared 2336 Penguin Survey of Business and Industry 1965 alongside 2337 Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences 1965. For the purposes of this article we can ignore the business book, as it doesn’t include the word Science in the title, other than to note that three more volumes were produced. Number 2528 in June 1966 was for 1966, number 2746 in July 1967 was for 1967 and oddly number 2882 in October 1968 was apparently for 1967-8. With four volumes the business series was considerably more successful than its fellow which proudly proclaimed on its back cover that it is “The first in a new series of annual surveys” but the Social Science ‘series’ in the end only had two volumes with the next, and final, edition being 2823 Penguin Social Sciences Survey 1968 coming out in October 1968 just in time for the whole Survey concept to be killed off.

Now I would be the first to say that I know little about the social sciences but some of the articles do look to be potentially quite interesting. In 1965 the book starts with ‘In Defence of Sociology’ which I feel is John Gould’s (the editor of both books) attempt to get his response as to why the book was produced in before anyone asked the question. But Trends and problems in Soviet studies sounds like a paper that could be written now and How small-scale societies change turns out to be quite a good study in social anthropology. I must admit however that Prolegomena to the study of British kinship had me reaching for a dictionary, it apparently means a preface so why not say so? Reading the article, or at least starting it,  confirms my initial opinion that the author was simply trying to show off, as the word choices are often unreasonably complex and make it virtually unreadable. The 1968 book does also have several very good papers, on the power of politics, armed forces and the political process, and the study of organisations being three that particularly drew my attention.

Conclusion

All properly written articles on science should finish with a summary of what we have learned and in this case I just want to stress how good these books are. As you can see from the selection of article titles I have picked out they are to some extent still relevant today and provide an interesting background to the development of modern science and technology. Apart from the 1963 volumes and 1965’s Social Sciences (by Josef Albers) the covers were all designed by F.H.K. Henrion which gives a pleasing consistency to the series, no designer is credited for the 1963 effort or 1967’s Technology Survey but that one at least also looks like his work.

The price more than doubled over the eight years from six shillings (30p) in 1961 to twelve shillings and sixpence (62½p) in 1968 and they were always considerably more expensive than other Penguin books at the time which probably helped with their demise. In 1968 a novel the same length as one of the surveys would have cost five shillings (25p) so less than half the price, the reason is probably down to the lower print runs for specialised titles so fewer being sold but equally the price must have put off a significant number of potential readers therefore contributing to the downward spiral of purchasers.

Search them out, they are worth looking for and when you do find them still only cost a few pounds.