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"  In one of our very first issues, back in 1902, we told the story of an Illinois schoolboy named Mark Richards, who built an automobile for himself. By saving money from his after-school job blacking stoves, Richards cobbled together enough parts to assemble a runabout that rolled on four skinny tires and was powered by a single-cylinder engine. &amp;quot;I had no knowledge of the principles and practice of gasoline engine construction,&amp;quot; Richards said, &amp;quot;yet I not only managed to make it but to build the transmission mechanism, friction clutch, spark-timing mechanism, body running gear, etc., even doing the necessary blacksmithing... I stuck to the job and am gratified with the result.&amp;quot;  If Mark Richards were alive today, he would love the story of Bob Dullam, a sculptor in Kalamazoo, Mich., who received one of our 2009 Backyard Genius Awards for building a replica of the Tumbler Batmobile. Dullam fabricated a steel chassis and laid on body plates made of epoxy reinforced with fiberglass matte, then dropped in a 350 Chevy V-8 and slapped on 44-inch-wide Super Swamper tires. Why did Dullam spend $50,000 on his beast? &amp;quot;I like Batman,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;and the only way to get this car was to build it myself.&amp;quot; The impulse to tinker, to putter, to do it yourself instead of buying it or paying someone to do it for you\u2014Richards and Dullam share that mindset with millions of do-it-yourselfers. Sometimes economic necessity drives this impulse, and other times the motivation has no price tag\u2014it&amp;#039;s the pride and freedom that come with self-reliance. In 2012, as Popular Mechanics celebrates 110 years in publication, self-reliance remains a guiding principle of the magazine. While PM&amp;#039;s long-standing slogan &amp;quot;Written So You Can Understand It&amp;quot; no longer appears on the cover, the magazine&amp;#039;s mission remains the same: Use plain language to present stories about how things work\u2014whether those things are internal combustion engines, supercomputers, or spacecraft\u2014as well as how to make and fix things yourself. Indeed, Popular Mechanics has depicted and fostered DIY for more than a century, which is why we chose it as the subject of this month&amp;#039;s cover story. By the time PM debuted in 1902, the Second Industrial Revolution was at full gallop and DIY was embedded in the American grain. Railroads had punched all the way to the West Coast, factories were gobbling up farmland, and the country was changing from a rural nation into an urban one. The year after Mark Richards built his runabout, Henry Ford and David Dunbar Buick, a couple of hardcore DIYers, jumped into the burgeoning automobile business. In the decades straddling the 19th and 20th centuries, while the first great car craze swept the nation, another significant trend emerged: Between 1890 and 1930, home ownership tripled and the American house itself became a project. To guide the masses, the early issues of Popular Mechanics were aimed at the initiated. Many readers were part of the rising class of mechanical professionals, people who knew how to fashion a miter joint, operate a lathe, and handle a drill press. The magazine&amp;#039;s Shop Notes offered advice on &amp;quot;How to Temper Springs&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Punching Structural Steel for Locomotive Tenders,&amp;quot; while Amateur Mechanics taught younger readers how to make such things as a dovetail-joint puzzle. On a parallel track, by 1930 Sears, Roebuck &amp;amp;amp; Co. had a building-materials catalog offering &amp;quot;everything you need to build, remodel, modernize or repair your house.&amp;quot; As America emerged from the Great Depression, the first golden age of PM&amp;#039;s DIY coverage dawned with the introduction of the Solving Home Problems and The Craftsman sections. The former offered little tips (put a sponge-rubber ball on the end of a coat hook to keep hats from slipping off), while the latter showed how to tackle big jobs (&amp;quot;Outdoor Fireplace of Poured Concrete&amp;quot;). After a lull during World War II, DIY exploded along with the postwar economic boom. Suburban housing developments, typified by Levittowns near Philadelphia and on Long Island, provided a vast opportunity for DIYers. As soon as people moved into a cookie-cutter Levittown house, they started making modifications\u2014adding a porch, expanding the garage, building a dormer. Technology was there to lend a hand with the introduction of lightweight portable power tools and the popularization of such convenient materials as drywall, Formica, and latex paint. And while Detroit kept cranking out ever more exotic cars, gearheads from the East Coast to California were out in the garage using yesteryear&amp;#039;s models to concoct their very own one-of-a-kind kandy-kolored tangerine-flake streamline babies. PM responded in 1962 by introducing one of our longest-running and most avidly read sections of the magazine, Saturday Mechanic. Beginning in 1971, Appliance Clinic helped readers deal with a deluge of electronic devices and household appliances; a decade later, computers were added to the mix with the advent of Software Monitor. A California kid named Steve Jobs, who grew up building Heathkit electronics projects, would later say that his boyhood forays into DIY &amp;quot;gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things.&amp;quot; After dropping out of college, Jobs retreated to his parents&amp;#039; garage with a buddy named Steve Wozniak to modify the first personal computer, the Altair 8800. You know the rest of that story. Jobs would later say that one of the &amp;quot;bibles&amp;quot; of his generation was The Whole Earth Catalog, a DIY project begun in 1968 by Stewart Brand, who put issues together with a couple of friends in Menlo Park, Calif., using an IBM Selectric typewriter and a Polaroid MP-3 camera. While the catalog appealed primarily to the counterculture, and PM stuck to the mainstream, both publications celebrated self-reliance. &amp;quot;It was all about empowering individuals,&amp;quot; Brand says. &amp;quot;The people who read it were interested in starting over from scratch.&amp;quot; Although the DIY mindset seemed to fade in the 1980s and &amp;#039;90s with the rise of the digital era, it returned in a new form at the start of the 21st century. While computer modding has roots in the late 1970s, its analog cousin\u2014the maker movement\u2014sprang to life in the early 2000s. Happily for PM, we are now in the midst of a hands-on creative resurgence. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s going on today is fantastic,&amp;quot; Brand says. &amp;quot;Maker Faire, DIYbio in Boston, tech schemers and dreamers, garage biotech people writing genetic code\u2014basically what you&amp;#039;ve got now is a tech-friendly generation of young people who are aware they can mess with the hardware as much as the software.&amp;quot; One of the hottest of the many DIY hotbeds is Brooklyn, N.Y. In the Boerum Hill neighborhood, half a dozen young co-workers gathered recently in the offices of MakerBot Industries, which has shipped more than 6500 of its desktop 3D printers to customers all over the world. Bre Pettis, the company&amp;#039;s 39-year-old co-founder and CEO, was regaling the group with tales of childhood adventures with an uncle in Boston who used to get up at 4 am to cruise the city&amp;#039;s garbage-truck routes, scavenging stuff he would fix and reuse or sell at weekend flea markets. &amp;quot;Together we built a bicycle for me from spare parts,&amp;quot; Pettis said. &amp;quot;It was a dirt bike, and we painted it black. At the end I had this aha! moment\u2014this bike is mine, and I can fix it if it breaks. Mystery was replaced by pure satisfaction. It&amp;#039;s very powerful when you&amp;#039;re 6 years old and realize you can fix anything.&amp;quot; Thanks to DIY&amp;#039;s open-source ethos, he added, people today can make almost anything using off-the-shelf modules and parts, backed by a community willing to share designs, ideas, and computer code. &amp;quot;We started this company because we wanted to have a machine that can make anything,&amp;quot; Pettis said, &amp;quot;putting the power of manufacturing in people&amp;#039;s hands.&amp;quot;  MakerBot&amp;#039;s 3D printer, for all its wizardry, is not really something new. Rather, like Popular Mechanics today, the invention is a contemporary manifestation of a very old tradition. It&amp;#039;s the latest link in an unbroken DIY chain that goes as far back as Ben Franklin&amp;#039;s stove, Mark Richards&amp;#039;s runabout, Henry Ford&amp;#039;s Model T, Stewart Brand&amp;#039;s catalog, and Bob Dullam&amp;#039;s Batmobile. It&amp;#039;s a safe bet that someone is out in the garage or down in the basement right now, working on the next big thing. Tinkering, puttering, hacking. Doing it himself.  &amp;amp;gt; The Ages of DIY Timeline &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;   The Ages of DIY 1902\u20141925: INDUSTRIAL ROOTS PM founding editor H.H. Windsor writes for an audience of tradesmen and farmers already familiar with machining, wiring, and woodworking. Doing it yourself is essential to making a living. Shop Notes and Amateur Mechanics sections show how to hone these skills in stories such as May 1908&amp;#039;s tutorial on fixing a machine&amp;#039;s broken flywheel, or a December 1917 project, &amp;quot;Electric Bolt Lock Made from Bell Ringer.&amp;quot; 1940\u20141965: RISE OF THE NOVICE The postwar surge in new housing makes DIY a fundamental part of owning a home and living the American dream. Popular Mechanics&amp;#039; Solving Home Problems section tackles leaky faucets, busted clocks, and sticky drawers. Projects retain a sense of thrift\u2014empty 35-mm film canisters become picnic saltshakers in May 1947. The homeowner steadily rises to prosperity. By July 1958, a typical story shows how to entertain guests with a new backyard smoker (made from a cleaned-out oil drum).  1985\u20142005: THE AGE OF SWEAT EQUITY DIY remains satisfying as a creative enterprise, but it gains allure as a way to maximize an investment. An April 1987 feature simply titled &amp;quot;Doing It Yourself&amp;quot; demonstrates how a weekend upgrade can translate into dollars saved. Hardware stores grow larger, and the range of options they offer a homeowner expands. Popular Mechanics begins running regular tool tests to explain how to choose a hammer\u2014not just any hammer, but the best hammer money can buy.  1925\u20141940: THE SHOP COMES HOME Popular Mechanics covers promise bold breakthroughs, but the magazine&amp;#039;s how-to pages grapple with the hard realities of the Great Depression. Tips emphasize reuse of items like inner tubes and crankcases. American workers apply trade skills to tasks at home, as projects explain how to vermin-proof an icebox drain, in May 1927, or how to hook a tray onto a beach umbrella, in September 1936.  1965\u20141985: THE WEEKEND-PROJECT ERA Americans continue to put down roots in new suburbs. As tastes and housing technology evolve, problem-solving changes from homespun to sophisticated. The magazine turns its DIY advice to maintaining new machines with the September 1971 debut of the Appliance Clinic. DIY becomes an outlet for fun and creative expression in the Weekend Workshop section, where detailed home-build stories like March 1972&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;A Backyard Storage Building That Isn&amp;#039;t an Eyesore&amp;quot; define the times.  2005\u2014PRESENT: THE MAKER REVOLUTION As some sectors of domestic manufacturing erode, the DIY zeitgeist shifts again. The act of making anything\u2014plywood shelves, plumbing-pipe lamps, backyard roller coasters\u2014is respected and celebrated in stories such as Popular Mechanics&amp;#039; annual Backyard Genius franchise and September 2009&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Ruggedize Your Own Tech.&amp;quot; Technology and communication offer new ways to share creations with like-minded communities such as those featured in May 2011&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;DIY Underground.&amp;quot; But the abstract nature of the digital age also stokes an enduring need to create an object that can be held, used, taken apart, and put back together.  &amp;amp;gt; The 110 Best DIY Tips Ever &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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