Short answers, pulled from the story.
Physics Today arrived on newsstands in May 1948 as a membership magazine for the American Institute of Physics. The first issue went directly to members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society.
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 4.370. This metric measures how frequently articles from the publication are cited by other scholarly works and indicates strong influence within the scientific literature community.
AIP Physics Today Division miscellaneous publications exist in records spanning from 1955 through 2006. These documents sit preserved at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives for future study alongside original editorial records from 1948 to 1971.
Non-members must purchase a paid annual subscription to receive the same content without society affiliation. Subscription fees from non-members help sustain operations for those outside the core membership base while granting identical material under different financial arrangements.
Specific historical coverage includes discussions of the state of physics in China during the 1950s and detailed analysis of the Soviet Union's physics programs throughout the 1970s. Decades later, the magazine examined the feasibility of the Star Wars program of the 1980s to track major geopolitical shifts through physical science.