Founding \emph{The Physical Review} and its early years

In 1893 \emph{The Physical Review}, ``a journal of experimental and theoretical physics,'' was founded by Edward L. Nichols at Cornell University. Nichols and his colleagues Ernest Merritt and Frederick Bedell had to solicit (and sometimes very politely reject) manuscripts, deal with questions of multiple publication, manage challenges by European physicists to papers by young American authors, see to book reviews, obituaries, and news notes, and keep the operation financially viable. A time of revolutionary change in physical ideas was about to start, and some in the vigorously growing American community, including at times the editors, found it difficult to keep up. The story of the beginnings of the journal gives some of the flavor of physics and the physics community at the turn of the twentieth century.