The National Geographic Magazine

Abstract

AN article in the January issue of the National Geographic Magazine, which begins the sixty-ninth volume, records the remarkable growth of interest in the publication and its widespread circulation. Nominally the organ of the National Geographic Society of Washington, U.S.A., the magazine began as a slim brochure in 1889, a year after the Society was founded. A membership role of 165 increased to 1,000 by 1899, but efforts to improve the circulation met with little success. Most of the members were in Washington, where the Society provided lectures: few were outside and practically none overseas. The Society was poor and had no premises of its own. Then in 1900, Mr. G. Grosvenor became the editor, a position which he still occupies. This marked a new era in the destinies of the Society and its magazine. Henceforth, instead of the Society supporting the magazine, the position was reversed and the continually expanding circulation of the magazine has brought large revenues to the Society, which has employed them in financing many important expeditions, of which the most recent was that of Capt. A. W. Stevens to the stratosphere. Mr. Grosvenor set a new standard for the magazine in width of interest, authoritative articles, topical matter and, above all, abundance of fine and often unique illustrations. To that has been added in recent years natural colour photographs in every issue and the frequent addition to the black and white maps in the letterpress of large supplementary coloured maps.