Science: Happy 100, National Geographic

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In the beginning, there was stodginess. When the 33 charter members of the National Geographic Society first met on Jan. 13, 1888, at Washington's musty Cosmos Club, their mission was to spur the "increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge." The hidebound organization founded by these scientists, bankers, lawyers and educators allowed "gifts to natives" as legitimate expenses; it waited until 1964 before permitting men and women to eat together in its main cafeteria. Still, the society's flagship, the yellow- bordered National Geographic magazine, which is now distributed in 167 countries, eventually came to rival Mom and apple pie as an American icon. Before skin flicks and magazines became commonplace, National Geographic offered generations of boys their first opportunity to ogle bare-breasted women -- though the breasts were almost always African or Asian, rarely Caucasian. Even today the magazine is squirreled away each month like precious treasure by many of the society's 10.5 million members, who boast floor- sagging collections and trade back copies until they are tattered.

For all its hoary ways, however, the National Geographic Society has been a noteworthy force in scientific innovation. As it prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary with a centennial issue of the magazine, scientific symposiums and special exhibits in Washington, it can look back on a distinguished record of accomplishment. Since 1890 it has helped fund some 3,300 research projects and expeditions, from Commander Robert Peary's 1909 trek to the North Pole to Marine Geologist Robert Ballard's 1986 exploration of the wreck of the Titanic. The society was the first American publisher to set up a color photo lab (1920), the first to feature underwater color photographs (1927), and the first to print a hologram, or three-dimensional photograph (1984).

National Geographic maps have long set the standard for cartography. They are so accurate that Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill reportedly followed the progress of World War II on them. Under the direction of Chief Cartographer John B. Garver Jr., the map department entered the computer age in 1983 with the acquisition of a specialized computer that enables mapmakers to modify roads, rivers, borders and country names without wholesale revision. Subscribers now receive six poster-size maps a year, each produced by the society's 130 researchers and mapmakers at a cost of $1 million.

True to its charter, the society is also developing educational video disks, and has produced a board game, Global Pursuit, as part of a ten-year program to restore geographic literacy to U.S. schoolchildren. Its steady output of adventure and scientific programming for television will reach more than 100 hours next year. Says C.D.B. Bryan, author of the centennial volume, The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery (Abrams; $45): "The National Geographic is not at all what we remember. It's not the old lady it used to be."