(Re-)Packaging Knowledge and The Business of Format: Benjamin Martin's The General Magazine of Arts and Sciences (1755–64)

Abstract

Benjamin Martin was an itinerant lecturer, instrument maker, and the author of a substantial number of textbooks mainly in the sciences. His biggest project, however, was The General Magazine of Arts and Sciences (1755–64), dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge to a broad audience. Rather than study Martin's works with regard to the history of science, this article examines his publications in terms of their highly self-conscious engagement with form and format. While his textbooks are concerned with economic compression, his periodical General Magazine experiments with a special, unwieldy mode of seriality that brings to the fore the role of format as well as the precarious status of seriality for the purposes of knowledge dissemination.