The history of the formation and development of technical journalism of the Russian Empire in the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th centuries

The formation and development of the technical periodicals in the Russian empire in the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th centuries are regarded. Their programs, subject matter direction, periodicity and time of publication, circulation have been analyzed. Technical periodicals are considered to be the main source not only of the technical achievements and development of different branches of industry but also of the events of the social life of that time. The forms and structure of the materials published in the periodicals are different. The problems of the technical periodical press were studied in the works by the Soviet scholars Yu. A. Mezhenko, O. I. Akopov and the Ukrainian investigator O. D. Shkolna and others but this problem has not been enough investigated. As far as the mining and metallurgical branches are concerned, they were not elucidated in details. According to the development of the mining branch of industry in the Russian empire the first technical periodical appeared in 1825 in S.–Petersburg. At the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century there were more than 20 mining and metallurgical periodicals in the Russian empire They were published in S.–Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterynburg, Tiflis, Kharkiv and Katerynoslav. Different branches of industry were developing in the Russian empire at that time and the readers appeared who needed to get highly qualified special information. In Katerynoslav region there was the highest concentration of the industrial enterprises. The engineers, specialists, workers were interested in technical press and valuable information. Reviews of economic problems, technical achievements of the Russian and foreign engineers in the mining and metallurgical branches of industry, government documents, the materials of the Congresses of the Southern mining engineers, the articles of the professors of the Mining University, statistical data, the problems of railway and river transport were elucidated in the technical periodicals. The technical press is a n important component of the source base of the industrial development in modern Ukraine.