Science: Happy 100, National Geographic

• Share

(2 of 2)

The society's second president, Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1898 succeeded his father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, set the tone for the enterprise by declaring, "The world and all that is in it is our theme." When Bell hired his future son-in-law, a schoolteacher named Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, 23, to run the magazine in 1899, the young man catered to snob appeal by soliciting "nominations for membership" instead of subscriptions. The device eventually created the largest nonselective society in the world. Grosvenor's grandson Gil now serves as president of the nonprofit society, which last year showed an estimated $370 million in revenues.

The magazine pioneered the use of photographs to take its members vicariously to the most remote corners of the earth. The society was not above using a little clout to get its photos. In 1905 it published 138 pictures of ; the Philippines that were so popular the magazine had to go to a second printing. Source of the pictures: a U.S. War Department report, courtesy of Secretary of War William Howard Taft, who happened to be Editor Grosvenor's cousin. On occasion, National Geographic has not let verisimilitude stand in the way of a good picture either. Editors laying out the February 1982 cover on Napoleon's life and campaigns used a computer to shift the position of one of the Egyptian pyramids in a photograph so it would fit better within the cover's format. The magazine's content has also been marred by political naivete. Perhaps the most distressing instance: a glowing feature on Hitler's Germany that was published in 1937, on the eve of World War II.

Despite such embarrassments, the society's real achievement has been to bring the world and the marvels of scientific discovery to its readers, who for years have followed the adventures of such favorites as French Undersea Explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Chimpanzee Expert Jane Goodall. Says Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, another society beneficiary: "The Geographic's foundation funding has contributed more than any other organization in bringing about an understanding of early man." The magazine's greatest strength is the exceptional sense of intimacy it shares with its readers, as well as its simple, first-person style. 60 Minutes Correspondent Morley Safer habitually packs issues of the magazine whenever he heads off to unfamiliar parts of the globe. Says he: "If it's somewhere you've never been to before, National Geographic can be pure gold -- just to get a sniff of the place."