Watch Mr. Wizard

 
YouTube link. 

This is a half-hour television episode from 1954. You'd have to be 60 years old or more to have seen this segment live, but younger visitors may remember later episodes or the Canadian revival in the 70s, or the updated Mr. Wizard's World of the 1980s.

For many baby boomers, this was our introduction to "hard science" and the concept that science could be interesting (and comprehensible). I suppose it would be different now; the teacher probably wouldn't be allowed to place a hand on Johnny's shoulder, and they probably couldn't make something explode on live camera by aerosolizing lighter fluid and igniting it.

Reposted from 2008, because Mental Floss has just posted an excellent history of the program:

Watch Mr. Wizard, which aired on NBC from 1951 to 1965, featured host Don Herbert performing a series of science experiments using everyday objects—glass bottles, cans, aquariums, matches—to illustrate the amazing world of physics. Eggs were sucked into bottles; water was boiled using an ice cube. They were pseudo-magic tricks, but instead of obscuring his method, Herbert satisfied the audience’s curiosity by explaining how science made them all possible...

Don Herbert Kemske was born July 10, 1917 in Waconia, Minnesota. He developed an interest in science while in the Boy Scouts and later obtained a degree in English and general science from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse (then known as La Crosse State Teachers College) in 1940. But Herbert didn’t pursue a teaching career. Instead, he followed his interest in drama and theater to New York City, where he worked as a pageboy for NBC, acted opposite future First Lady Nancy Reagan, and was cast in a Broadway show...

Like a lot of television of the era, it was live, not taped. The pace was leisurely, with Herbert walking through general principles over the course of a half-hour. Crucially, he refused to wear a lab coat or conduct his experiments in a laboratory setting. Instead, he wore short-sleeved shirts and used common household items while broadcasting from a garage or kitchen...

Within a few years, Watch Mr. Wizard was being carried in more than 100 markets and was reaching between 1 and 3 million weekly viewers... After viewing a pilot, Nickelodeon agreed to fund 26 half-hour episodes of Mr. Wizard’s World for a 1983 premiere.

Following Herbert's death at age 89 in 2007, a National Science Foundation official claimed that, more than anyone, Herbert may have been the person most responsible for getting people interested in science. In the 1960s and 1970s, applicants to The Rockefeller University—a science research center based in New York City—were asked what inspired them to get into science. In the space allotted for an answer, half of them wrote: "Mr. Wizard."

What I didn't know in the 1950s was that Don Herbert was related to one of my high-school classmates.  Posted for Steve, currently enjoying retirement in Santa Fe, New Mexico.