This month you can get free access to the complete archive of Scientific American issues from 1845 – 1909. Everything is in PDF form. Here is a quote from the press release:
Readers can now revisit original reports of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone and Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb. Scientific American’s complete archive, back to volume 1, issue 1, is now available on nature.com. To celebrate the completion of the Scientific American archive on nature.com, the 1845-1909 archive collection will be free to all to access from 1-30 November 2011. Published since 1845, Scientific American is the longest continually published magazine in the U.S.
This stuff makes for fascinating, riveting reading. Check out what is said in 1909 about the future of aviation and war, predicting that aircraft will have no place in modern warfare, for example. Oh-oh, I misplaced that link.