29 Facts About Hugo Gernsback

Hugo Gernsback was a Luxembourgish American editor and magazine publisher whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories.

Hugo Gernsback emigrated to the US in 1904 and later became a citizen.

Hugo Gernsback was a significant figure in the electronics and radio industries, even starting a radio station, WRNY, and the world's first magazine about electronics and radio, Modern Electrics.

Hugo Gernsback was born in 1884 in Luxembourg City, to Berta, a housewife, and Moritz Gernsbacher, a winemaker.

Hugo Gernsback emigrated to the United States in 1904 and later became a naturalized citizen.

Hugo Gernsback married three times: to Rose Harvey in 1906, Dorothy Kantrowitz in 1921, and Mary Hancher in 1951.

In 1912, Hugo Gernsback said that he estimated 400,000 people in the US were involved in amateur radio.

Hugo Gernsback started the Radio News magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts in 1919.

Hugo Gernsback died at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City on August 19,1967, at age 83.

Hugo Gernsback provided a forum for the modern genre of science fiction in 1926 by founding the first magazine dedicated to it, Amazing Stories.

Hugo Gernsback said he became interested in the concept after reading a translation of the work of Percival Lowell as a child.

Hugo Gernsback created his preferred term for the emerging genre, "scientifiction", in 1916.

Hugo Gernsback is sometimes credited with coining "science fiction" in 1929 in the preface of the first Science Wonder Stories, although instances of "science-fiction" have been found as far back as 1851, and the preface itself makes no mention of it being a new term.

Hugo Gernsback was noted for sharp, sometimes shady, business practices, and for paying his writers extremely low fees or not paying them at all.

Jack Williamson, who had to hire an attorney associated with the American Fiction Guild to force Hugo Gernsback to pay him, summed up his importance for the genre:.

Hugo Gernsback's fiction includes the novel Ralph 124C 41+; the title is a pun on the phrase "one to foresee for many".

Hugo Gernsback combined his fiction and science into Everyday Science and Mechanics magazine, serving as the editor in the 1930s.

In 1954, Hugo Gernsback was awarded an Officer of Luxembourg's Order of the Oak Crown, an honor equivalent to being knighted.

The nickname soon became almost universal and its use legally protected; "Hugo Gernsback Award" replaced the longer name in all official uses after the 1991 cycle.

Hugo Gernsback created dangerous precedents which many later editors in the field followed.

Hugo Gernsback made significant contributions to the growth of early broadcasting, mostly through his efforts as a publisher.

Hugo Gernsback originated the industry of specialized publications for radio with Modern Electrics and Electrical Experimenter.

Hugo Gernsback made use of the magazine to promote his interests, including having his radio station's call letters on the cover starting in 1925.

Hugo Gernsback advocated for future directions in innovation and regulation of radio.

Such experiments were expensive, eventually contributing to Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company going into bankruptcy in 1929.

Hugo Gernsback held 80 patents by the time of his death in New York City on August 19,1967.

Hugo Gernsback's first patent was a new method for manufacturing dry cell batteries, a patent applied for on June 28,1906, and granted February 5,1907.

Hugo Gernsback published a work entitled Music for the Deaf in The Electrical Experimenter describing the Physiophone, a device which converted audio into electrical impulses that could be detected by humans.

Hugo Gernsback advocated this device as a method for allowing the deaf to experience music.