TODAY IN SCIENCE: Happy Birthday, Mr. Wizard!
Don Herbert, who would go on to become television’s pioneering science educator, Mr. Wizard, was born on this day in 1917.
Herbert was a radio actor in a children’s health program when he came up with the idea of utilizing the new medium of television to teach kids about science. His idea was to conduct on-air, hands-on science experiments using common household items that could be recreated at home. Watch Mr. Wizard debuted on NBC in 1951 and appeared in a weekly, half-hour format. Mr. Wizard added to the appeal for young people by having a boy or girl assist him with his experiments. Nearly 550 episodes would air before the show, which also spawned a network of kids’ science clubs, was canceled in 1965. The show, which won a Peabody Award in 1953, was revived twice – once by Canadian television in 1971 and again in by Nickelodeon in 1983-1990.
Herbert, who did not have a formal science background, said once that everything he did on the show he learned via hands-on experimentation. He remained in the science video education business even after he stopped shooting new episodes of Watch Mr. Wizard. He produced the video series Teacher to Teacher with Mr. Wizard for Nickelodeon; a series of 20-minute videos encouraging student science experimentation in Science 20; a series of films for public television called Experiment: The Story of a Scientific Search; and 536 episodes of How About, 90-second films that could be used in news programs. He also appeared periodically on The Late Show with David Letterman to conduct on-air experiments.
Beloved by a generation of baby boomers, Herbert died in 2007. His work continues to inspire generations of informal science educators, including Bill Nye and Paul Zaloom of Beakman’s World.
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Image Credits: NBC Network [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
