Are you aware that Google books has full issues of ALL Popular Science magazines online? Popular Mechanics too.
Here is January 1950 for Popular Science.
An installment of Shel Silverstein’s Teevee Jeebies (those pages SFW) http://playboy.covertocover.com/default.html?C=46&S=79
Uncle Shelby’s ABZ book: http://playboy.covertocover.com/default.html?C=48&P=71
Oh Yes. Popular Science and Popular Mechanics on Google are but one of the many ways I spend my time when I’m not writing research papers. 
I always suspected that Hefner’s inclusion of articles, stories and interviews was the effort of an intellectual dilettante of the 50s to put the bunny pictures on the level of ‘art’, and yet I’ll be damned if he didn’t succeed at it. There were some knockout interviews over the years, and a lot of great fiction.