A typical ‘Tom Swift’ book cover
Toronto. From time to time an article in our journal was not about cameras, photos, or photographic history. An example in issue 17-3 is the article on the Tom Swift book series. The book illustrated is of interest since it is a tale about a “photo telephone” which predicted the now ubiquitous ‘smart phone’ with its colour camera, digital imaging and ability to send any photo anywhere in an instant.
Ev describes how he came to get the material for this article as follows, “In a small, shabby office in downtown Manhattan, a man named Edward Stratemeyer, something of an inventor in his own right, kept a close watch on the trends of popular interest. Stratemeyer was a writer of juvenile literature, but to describe him simply as an author of childrens books would be a massive understatement. He was probably the most prolific author of successful juvenile books, or for that matter of books of any kind, in publishing history.
“The above, written by Arthur Prager in American Heritage, December 1976 began an excellent article on Stratemeyer, a copy of which was sent by Patricia Belier (our most prolific East Coast contributor) to our Curator.”
Note that Pat is the daughter of the late Bill Belier, an early PHSC president. I have read a few of the ‘Tom Swift’ books myself. A neighbour had a small library of these little gems.
