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I Was Raised on Mr. Wizard

Posted by RPM on October 20, 2006
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I haven’t touched an Ask A ScienceBlogger for a couple of months. This week, the powers that be are asking us:

What’s the best science TV show of all time?

The first show that came to mind was Mr. Wizard. As young tyke in the 1980s, I watched a lot of Nickelodeon. Nick was a staple of my early TV viewing, with classics like Mr. Wizard, along with You Can’t Do That On Television and Double Dare. Mr. Wizard was great for the science, but it was also fun to laugh at the dorky looking kids on the show. And I secretly longed to be one of those kids. Only not as dorky, but on the show none the less.

Also in the running are Bill Nye the Science Guy and Beakman’s World, but they’re a distant second to the Wizard.

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Comments

  1. #1 Eric Juve
    October 20, 2006

    I really liked Mr Wizard as well, but prior to that was a show called “Industry On Parade”, a documentary about how everyday things were made. One of the eppisodes that sticks out in my mind is the one showing how light bulbs were made. Maybe that is a reason that I became an engineer instead of a scientist.

  2. #2 Gary
    October 20, 2006

    I grew up with a combination of “Industry On Parade” and “Heaven Speaks”, the “Television program with a dignity that,s Divine!” …only 2 channels available by antenna.
    Even though “Heaven Speaks” had harp music and a guy that I was certain was Jesus talking…..I preferred “Industry On Parade”….as a preteen..

  3. #3 Jude
    October 21, 2006

    The best science TV show of all time was the one where Frank Baxter in the Bell Science films. Even though I haven’t seen one in about 40 years, the concepts and fun of those shows has stayed with me. Mr. Wizard was just strange.

  4. #4 JohnJB
    October 21, 2006

    Way back in the 1960′s Chicago public television produced a show called (I think) Dr. Posen’s Universe.

    B&W (of couse), single camera and a guy talking and writing on a blackboard. Most of it went over my head but my brother and I loved it.

    There was also a book – Dr. Posens’s Giant’s – about famous scientists of history (“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants._ – Nowton

    Remembered fondly by me but apparently unknown to Google.

  5. #5 JohnJB
    October 21, 2006

    Newton -letter to Hooke to Hooke, 5 Feb. 1676.