Back in Cheyenne when I was a kid, my mother’s nearly unbroken collection
of National
Geographic magazines took up all four shelves of a very tall book case
in the basement. The eagerly awaited
monthly additions to the collection adorned the coffee table and then lingered
for a few months in the magazine rack by my father’s chair until joining the
archives.
The collection began in the late
1920’s, begun by her mother Mona.
Despite a few gaps in the early Depression
years when the family could hardly feed itself let alone afford such a
luxury, she kept up her subscription through thick and thin, a World War and a dozen moves from Missouri to Iowa to the Minnesota Iron
Range, to Montana, to Colorado and finally to Wyoming.
It was no mean feat just lugging
them around. As anyone can attest who
has ever tried it a paper carton of the dense, glossy paper magazines weighed
about as much as your average anvil.
They were an aspirational symbol of
my mother’s steely determination to improve herself, to rise above the stark
poverty of her childhood and establish herself as a well read and sophisticated
matron, worthy of the respect and admiration of society. And they were not just for ostentatious
display. She read every one cover to
cover, just as she did the novels of the Great
American Writers that she collected from the Book of the Month Club.
She was exactly the middlebrow audience the magazine was
geared to—intelligent readers who would never have the opportunity to visit the
exotic locals explored in its pages.
I was equally engrossed by
them. Yes, I will admit that like nearly
every horny pre-teen in America I got my first exciting look at boobs in photos
of African tribal women and that I
may have returned to those particular issues more regularly than others. But I surfed through them all, just as I
eagerly awaited the arrival of new copies.
It was not just the travel pieces, but the in depth—for the
time—exploration of the growing study of human evolution, exploration of
oceans’ depths with their unimaginably strange creatures, and coverage of the
dawning space age that enthralled me.
And the maps, those glorious, huge
maps that came tucked in the magazine about four times a year to be unfolded
and spread out over the carpet and studied in all of their rich detail on both
sides. I would cover the walls of my
basement room with them like other kids did with posters of fast cars or sports
heroes.
All in all, I have to admit to getting
a good chunk of my education from those magazines with the bright yellow frame
on the cover.
Our family was not alone in
this. Hundreds of thousands of others
did much the same. Which is why that
even today boxes of old Geographics
can be found in garage sales. They are
so common in fact, that unlike copies of Life, Look, or the Saturday
Evening Post that tended to be thrown out after a few weeks, the Geographic has practically no value to
collectors despite their handsome contents.
It all began, of course, very
differently. On September 22 1880 the
first issue came off the presses. It had
a drab brown cover. Inside, with no
illustrations what so ever, were dry, scholarly articles meant to be of
interest to sophisticated readers. Not
that it had many. The first issue went
out to the 187 members of the fledgling National Geographic Society founded just months earlier in Washington, D.C.
Charter members of the Society,
formed in January of that year included several eminent names: inventor Alexander Graham Bell; Bell’s
father-in-law, lawyer Gardiner Greene
Hubbard; explorers John Wesley
Powell and A.W. Greeley; and
scholar George Kennan. Hubbard, one of Bell’s first investors and
first President of Bell Telephone, assumed the helm of the
fledgling organization and was the force behind the launch of the Magazine and
it de-facto editor.
In 1880 the original brown cover was
replaced with the famous Yellow Border with
inner elaborate oak leaf scroll work framing the table of contents.
The magazine came out sporadically
until going monthly in 1896. Circulation
had grown to about 1000, mostly members of the Society but some subscriptions
and a hand full of newsstand sales. The
next year Hubbard died and Bell assumed the presidency of the Society.
The magazine had been intended to
fund the Society’s sponsorship of exploratory expeditions and other
expenses. Both it and the Society were
floundering. Bell decided that a new
tact was necessary—to open up Society membership to the general public using an
upgraded Magazine as a major lure. He
felt that the middle class would flock to membership that had been limited to
scientists, explorers, and a handful of wealthy patrons. For this plan to work, the Magazine had to
cease being a purely academic journal and offer stories of general interest
written for the intelligent lay reader in mind.
Bell was then spending most of his
time in Nova Scotia and
concentrating his efforts on the development of self-propelled heavier than air craft.
He knew that he would have to bring in someone to manage the
Magazine on a hands-on basis. In 1899
Bell recruited the 23 year old son of a respected historian to assume
editorship of the Magazine. Gilbert H. Grosvenor was teaching
school in New Jersey before he took
the job. For the first few years Bell
paid his annual salary out of his own pocket.
Grosvenor was wildly successful in
carrying out Bell’s vision. He hired
professional journalists to pen articles.
Sometimes they took dry academic reports and simple translated them into
readable English. But soon writers were
accompanying the expeditions the Society sponsored and were engaged to do more
conventional travel pieces to spots all over the world. The pages of the magazine were still dense
with type, the articles long, and no illustrations, but they were highly
readable in those days people had the leisure—and fewer distractions—to invest
in reading them.
By 1906 Grosvenor, who often faced
opposition from conservative Board members, had raised circulation to 11,000
member/subscribers. He not only won
plaudits for his success, he also won the hand of Bell’s daughter Elsie in 1900.
Contributing to the popularity of
the Magazine were exciting first person accounts of the expeditions the Society
sponsored, including Robert E. Peary’s
Polar expeditions.
Another reason for the growth was
the introduction of photographs Grosvenor had been trying to introduce
illustrations—particularly photographs—to the magazine for some time, but there
was still heavy resistance to “cheapening” the magazine in that way by the
Board. When a planned article did not
arrive with just days to spare to printing leaving an 11 page hole in the
Magazine, he filled those pages with unsolicited photos of Lhasa, Tibet—the first ever seen in the West—that had fortuitously
arrived just days earlier. The photos
caused a sensation. Soon photographers
were accompanying journalists and explorers.
By the 1908 half of the magazine’s editorial space was taken up by
photos.
Just two years later he introduced
color photos using color screen plates in a spread of photos from Korea and
Japan. In 1916 he introduced the
first “natural color” photographs.
Bell had retired as President in
1903 but remained an influential Board member and a frequent contributor of
articles. A succession of short term
presidents of the Society followed until Grosvenor was elected President in
1920 while maintaining editorship of the Magazine.
A cartographic division was
launched, eventually named National
Geographic Maps. The first fold-out
map included in a magazine was of the World
War I Western Front. The Society’s
extraordinarily detailed maps—and their wide variety including maps with
depiction of geological features, historical maps, political maps that were up
to date in a world of shifting boundaries, and specialty maps of every sort
insured both their popularity and usefulness.
In World War II the Allies often found Geographic maps
superior to any from their own cartographic and inelegance services.
Grosvenor insisted on editorial
“neutrality” in his converge of the world, concentrating of the culture and
history of different people and avoiding condemnation of their governance,
religion, or life style. The Magazine
maintained this neutrality even through two World Wars and growing ideological divides. The policy drew criticism, even condemnation,
from all sides. But it also helped
guarantee that writer and photographers would be granted access to nations and
regions across the globe.
Grosvenor remained at the helm of
the Society and Magazine until his retirement in 1954. The magazine then had a readership of over
two million and in addition to a regular publications for public schools and
book publishing.
His son, Melville Bell Grosvenor, was society president and editor from 1957
to 1967 and editor in chief until 1977. His grandson, Gilbert Melville Grosvenor took over as editor and executive of the
Society. He currently holds the position
of is currently vice-president and editor.
Gilbert has been Board Chair since 1987, although management of the
Society and editorship of the magazine are now in other hands. It is a remarkable four generation dynasty of
leadership.
Although circulation of the magazine
is down from its heyday, compared to other venerable print journals it is
healthy. Quality remains high. Success has been due to the willingness of
the Society to use its Yellow Boarder logo and prestige to branch out into
highly successful ventures in other media, including its award winning films
and a cable network channel.
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