Public Roads Magazine: Chronicling Innovation

摘要

From the first issue of Public Roads, dated May 1918, the magazine has been about innovation in the field of highway engineering. In a salutatory opening in the first issue, Director Logan Waller Page of the U.S. Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering wrote that the new magazine was "dedicated to those, both in official and private life, who are concerned [about] developing means of better rural communication,... facilitating the marketing of the crops of the Nation, and,... aiding in the solution of the daily more perplexing traffic problem." The goal was to incorporate the work of those "who have in mind the ambition and at heart the desire to advance to as near perfection as possible the science of roadbuilding." Page did not want the new magazine to be perceived as a dictator of best practices, but rather wanted his agency to use "the superior facilities at its disposition" to help the State highway agencies and others advance highway science. "It will be our ear- nest effort-always with the support and cooperation of the highway organizations of the States-to present matters of special interest to those directly concerned with the construction and maintenance of roads, to bring to all the progress of road improvement throughout the country, to discuss its problems and record its results."