When the National Geographic Society was founded in 1888, "geography was regarded as one of the dullest of subjects, something to inflict upon schoolboys and avoid in later life." Today--thanks to the unstinting efforts of generations of talented, dedicated men and women working for the Society--that 1888 definition is as obsolete as the gas lamp. The Society has transformed a "dull subject" into a unique vision of the world.

Organized for "the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge," the Society has fulfilled that sweeping mission with scientific precision and journalistic genius. For nearly a century, the National Geographic has been at the leading edge of scientific exploration, taking man's past back more than 3 million years, unlocking the secrets of the oceans, lifting men into the stratosphere, mapping the very boundaries of the sky. In order to convey this invaluable body of knowledge to an ever-growing membership, National Geographic staff members have pioneered the latest advances in communication from color photography and holography to high-speed printing, setting a standard of accuracy and graphic excellence in the Society's magazines, maps, books, and films.

National Geographic, official journal of the Society, has earned a worldwide reputation as the leading source of accurate, often definitive, information about the world and its peoples. Its yellow-bordered cover is a familiar sight in millions of homes, libraries, and schools. Everyone from schoolchildren writing reports to scientists seeking information has learned to rely upon the Geographic. It is the Society's prime means of fulfilling its mission of increasing and diffusing geographic knowledge. When the Geographic won the 1984 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the judges noted that the 96-year-old publication had "the energy and look that are as young as any magazine born in the last 12 months."

The National Geographic Society, now the world's largest scientific and educational institution, had modest beginnings. It was started in January 1888 when 33 public-spirited men met in Washington, D.C. The guiding spirit behind the enterprise was Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a Boston lawyer and philanthropist who had helped organize the first telephone company for his son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell. Mr. Hubbard was elected President of the new society.

In October 1888, the first National Geographic magazine appeared. A slim, highly technical journal bound in a drab terra-cotta cover, it went to 165 charter members who presumably enjoyed such articles as "The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis" and similar abstruse discourses. This was not exactly what Mr. Hubbard had in mind. He wanted a magazine that would appeal to intelligent laymen as well as geographers, but he died before he could fulfill his dream.

Two Key Decisions

Mr. Hubbard was succeeded in 1898 by Dr. Bell, who devoted much of his prodigious intellect and energy to making National Geographic a better journal. The inventor made two key decisions that were to profoundly affect the future course of the Society.

One was to stop trying to increase circulation by newsstand sales and offer the journal to anyone who wanted to become a member of the Society, thus drawing upon people who believed in its work and wanted to contribute to it. Dr. Bell believed people from all walks of life would join the Society if their interest was aroused by a lively journal.

He was right. Through the years, right up to the present, the National Geographic Society has been sustained by loyal members--now numbering 10.6 million--who are not merely subscribing to a magazine but are adding their support to an organization that they feel a part of. The familiar stories of members who cannot bear to part with ever-growing stacks of National Geographics and of memberships continuing through several generations of one family testify to the wisdom of Dr. Bell's decision.

After all, not many scientific societies inspire the kind of personal identification that caused one National Geographic member to write: "As you know, there is no such thing as a 'tin roof' and many years ago you promised me you would watch that error."

Dr. Bell's second major decision was to hire a promising young man to put some life in the magazine and promote membership. That man turned out to be Gilbert H. Grosvenor, a 23-year-old schoolteacher who reported for work on April 1, 1899. His innovative leadership transformed the National Geographic magazine from a journal of cold geographic fact into a vehicle for conveying the living, breathing truth about the world, at the same time leaving a lasting imprint upon American journalism.

Young Grosvenor moved into an office that consisted of half of one small room with a few sticks of furniture and six enormous boxes crammed with Geographics returned by newsstands. Within a year, he had more than doubled the membership in the Society, raising it from 1,000 to 2,000, and had begun publishing articles of general interest. It was a start.

Eleven Pages of Photos

The young editor's major breakthrough came when he decided to fill 11 pages in the January 1905 issue with photographs of the mysterious city of Lhasa in Tibet. He expected to be fired for this unprecedented move. Instead, he recalled, "Society members congratulated me on the street."

The layout and the introduction of color photographs five years later set the pattern for National Geographic's pioneering in photojournalism. In his history of American magazines, Frank Luther Mott wrote that "color transformed the Geographic into a kind of periodical never before known."

The pages of the magazine have brought the world in all its diversity to millions of people, broadening their horizons and making no small contribution to world understanding. African tribesmen and Iowa farmers, the heights of Mount Everest and the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the turbulent eruption of a volcano and the quiet blooming of a flower, a whale breaking the surface of the sea and an eagle soaring in the sky--all these and many more reflections of the incredible variety of the world have appeared in National Geographic.

It was Gilbert H. Grosvenor who said that geography was treated as a dull subject when the Society was founded in 1888. At the time of his death in February 1966, he had done as much as any man to change the whole concept of geography.

Sponsored Many Expeditions

At the same time it was reporting about faraway places, the National Geographic Society was playing a major role in discovering and understanding them. Almost from its very beginning, the Society has sponsored expeditions and research projects. The first National Geographic expedition, in 1890 and 1891, explored and mapped Mount St. Elias along the then unknown border of southern Alaska and Canada, and discovered Canada's highest peak, 19,850-foot Mount Logan. The mountaineering tradition was still alive in 1963 when the Society was the principal sponsor of the first American ascent of Mount Everest. Barry C. Bishop of the Geographic staff was one of the six members of the expedition to reach the top of the world's highest mountain.

National Geographic grants also helped Robert E. Peary to reach the North Pole, Richard E. Byrd to fly over the South Pole, and an Army Air Corps stratosphere balloon to set an altitude record of 72,395 feet that stood for 21 years. These feats combined adventurous exploration with science, but the Society long has supported pure science. One of the most significant of these projects was the enormous effort, cosponsored by the California Institute of Technology, of systematically photo mapping the night skies, revealing objects up to one billion light-years distant, including tens of thousands of vast, remote clusters of galaxies.

The Society's Committee for Research and Exploration is made up of distinguished experts who evaluate and pass on research projects, awarding $3.5 million a year in grants. Their support has helped hundreds of scientists add to man's knowledge of the world around him. Aided by National Geographic grants, the Leakey family of Africa has helped uncover man's deepest past, and Donald C. Johanson unearthed the skeleton dubbed "Lucy." Field studies by three researchers have revealed hitherto unknown facts about primates. Jane Goodall has observed chimpanzees; Dian Fossey, gorillas; and Birute M.F. Galdikas, orangutans. The search for early man in the New World has been carried out in several major projects. Research grants have helped to uncover the buried city of Aphrodisias, and to study the newly discovered skeletons of victims of the wrath of Vesuvius at Herculaneum.

In a related field, the National Geographic Society has long been in the forefront of the conservation movement. When lumbering threatened the giant sequoias of California in 1915, the Society and its members contributed $100,000 to help preserve 2,239 acres in Sequoia National Park. The Society also was active in the effort to save the national parks, a campaign culminating in the landmark National Park Service Act of 1916.

Since then, the Society's interest in protecting the environment has been reflected in many magazine articles and in such books as Alaska's Magnificent Parklands and The Wonder of Birds. Entire issues of the magazine have been devoted to conservation oriented topics such as energy and the national parks.

Books and Maps

Books are one of the many varied tools the Society uses to diffuse geographic knowledge. The Book Service and Special Publications divisions prepare lavishly illustrated books ranging over a broad spectrum of interests from ancient Greece and Rome to the exploration of space and China today. As a public service, the National Geographic also contributes the services of editors, writers, and photographers to publish official guides to the White House, the United States Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the Washington Monument.

The Society's cartographers are world-renowned for the quality of their maps, and since 1918 have been doing special supplements for the magazine. A definitive map of China, the first since 1945, appeared in the July 1980 issue, along with an ethnic map showing the diversity of that country's peoples and languages. The National Geographic Atlas of the World has become a standard reference since the first edition in 1961; a revised, fifth edition was published in the fall of 1981. The Society's first world globe appeared in 1961, and now is in homes and schools around the world.

Peoples and Places of the Past, a cultural atlas of the human experience from its earliest traces to the Renaissance, published in 1983, combined text, cartography, photography, and illustration in a work that is at once a comprehensive reference and an intriguing chair side companion.

Television Sets Standards

The Society did not rush into television, but when its first programs appeared in 1965-66, they immediately elevated the standards of documentary TV. Geographic programs have won dozens of awards, including the coveted George Foster Peabody prize for "outstanding television education." They hold 13 of the top 25 places in Public Broadcasting Service ratings history, including the two most popular PBS programs ever. The Society also produces highly praised educational films and filmstrips and a series of multimedia kits designed to teach science and social studies and to reinforce reading comprehension skills in young learners.

National Geographic World proved to be an instant success when it was introduced in September 1975. Produced for children aged 8 through 12 years, the colorful monthly magazine is edited with the same attention to detail and regard for accuracy that have made the parent magazine world famous. World obviously filled a need, for in a little more than three months after it was launched, circulation reached a million, and it now totals 1.5 million. A series of books for children of the same ages has proven equally as stimulating and successful, as has a series of books for children between the ages of 4 and 8.

National Geographic Traveler, the Society's newest magazine and its first magazine for adults since 1888, was launched in the spring of 1984. It came about in response to the long-expressed desires of members for travel information that is at once educational and entertaining, and immediately attracted a circulation of 750,000 before the first of its quarterly issues was available for inspection. Circulation now stands at nearly 1 million.

Distinguished Trustees

The affairs of the Society, incorporated in Washington, D.C., as a nonprofit scientific and educational institution, are directed by the Board of Trustees. The trustees meet regularly to act as a budget bureau, a promotions board, an appropriations commission, and an advisory board--all rolled into one.

In August 1980, Gilbert M. Grosvenor became President of the Society, the 14th in a distinguished line. He also is a member of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Melvin M. Payne is Chairman of the Board, and Dr. Thomas W. McKnew is Advisory Chairman. Owen R. Anderson, the Society's Executive Vice President, and Lloyd H. Elliott, President of George Washington University, are Vice Chairmen. Wilbur E. Garrett, Editor of National Geographic, and Robert L. Breeden, Vice President, Publications, also are members of the Board.

Other members are Thomas E. Bolger, Chairman of the Board, Bell Atlantic; Frank Borman, Chairman of the Board and President, Eastern Airlines; Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb, Vice President and Chief Scientist, IBM; J. Carter Brown, Director, National Gallery of Art; Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States; Michael Collins, Vice President, LTV Aerospace and Defense Company; George M. Elsey, President Emeritus, American Red Cross; Arthur B. Hanson, Senior Partner, Hanson, O'Brien, Birney and Butler; Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; Jerome H. Holland, Former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden; Carlisle H. Humelsine, Chairman of the Board, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson; Curtis E. LeMay, Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force; Laurance S. Rockefeller, Chairman, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Robert C. Seamans Jr., Henry R. Luce Professor of Environment and Public Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; James H. Wakelin Jr., Former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology; and Conrad L. Wirth, Former Director, National Park Service.

Trustees emeritus include Crawford H. Greenewalt, Caryl P. Haskins, William McChesney Martin Jr., Frederick G. Vosburgh, and James E. Webb.