Hugo Gernsback landed in New York from his native Luxembourg with a plan to to get rich selling a battery he had invented, and $200. His plan failed. He switched to selling radio parts which he imported, and to assist in marketing them, published a catalog. The catalog became a magazine, Modern Electrics, eventually renamed Electrical Experimenter, and finally Science and Invention. In August 1923 Gernsback published it as a special “Science Fiction Number”, with the cover story “The Man From the Atom”, and five other ‘science fiction” stories. The issue sold well, and three years later, in April of 1926, Gernsback introduced “Amazing Stories”, the very first magazine dedicated entirely to science fiction. – and the first of very many which were to follow, in the mold set by Gernsback.
