National Geographic Through the Ages

I asked my dad to send me a random sample of old National Geographics from our collection at home. My grandfather started collecting them when he was in his twenties and my dad has continued the tradition: there are three or four bookshelves devoted entirely to National Geographic at our house in Boston.

Here are some scans of covers from some of the earlier issues he sent. It is interesting to note the progression in contents, from more America-centric at the beginning to more other-world-centric later on, as well as the change in the layout of the cover, from just a hand-drawn frame to a photo with the frame to a photo with just a hint of the frame at the top. The price has, unsurprisingly, changed too, from "$8.00 a year/$1.00 a copy" to $15 for a subscription today.

(Also, there's a long story on cats in the 1964 issue (Vol. 125, No. 4), complete with adorable photographs of kittens. Don't quite know what to make of that one.)

1959