"The increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge" is the stated mission of the National Geographic Society. Though the society has also been very successful in increase and diffusion of NatGeo’s yellow-bordered magazine—and similarly emblemed documentary discs—throughout libraries.
1888: The Scientific Association's Humble Beginnings
The National Geographic Society was founded in 1888 in Washington D.C. by a group of eminent explorers, meteorologists, topographers, surveyors, naturalists, and financiers, including Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the Society's first president—a prime backer of inventor Alexander Graham Bell.
The Society was just one of many scientific associations established in those days, partially in emulation of similar clubs popular in the British Empire. And partially, one biographer claimed, to help add variety to the rather stale nightlife in the US capital.
The first issue of the Society's famous magazine appeared in October of that year, its featureless cover giving no hint of what was to come. It was an unimpressive thing, packed with technical articles for the Society's members, and no illustrations, until soon after Hubbard's death.
Alexander Graham Bell, who had taken an active role in the faltering Society, hired his future son-in-law Gilbert Grosvenor, among other talents, to help raise the magazine's profile.
Magazine Finds Success with High-Quality Images
In emulation of the most successful nonfiction bestsellers of the day—including Darwin and the Bible—Grosvenor broke up the jungle of text with shorter paragraphs and headings, and filled the pages with an "abundance of beautiful, instructive and artistic illustrations."
Over the ensuing decades, the magazine became a fixture and an heirloom in US households, so much so that deep thinkers have tried to calculate how many hoarded back-issue copies of National Geographic it would take for the weight to submerge the North American continent.
In the early 1900s, Society began sponsoring live lectures by eminent explorers, travelers, and luminaries such as Wilbur Wright, Robert E. Peary, and Roald Amundsen. Their oratory was frequently augmented by slide shows and, soon the astounding new novelty of expedition films shot expressly for the occasion on safaris and ventures that the Society had underwritten.
Late 1950s-1960s: Move into Documentaries
Rather amazingly, National Geographic, while not shy about plumbing the abyssal depths of the ocean or the rafting the Nile, was late in exploring television. Gilbert H. Grosvenor had ignored the living-room medium, but his son Melville, succeeding him as editor/president of the Society, finally began preparing National Geographic documentaries for the mass audiences after one of the lecture films, Bones of the Bounty (a scuba dive to the famous mutiny ship of Captain Bligh) went over well on NBC-TV's Omnibus program in 1958.
Robert C. Doyle was appointed to lead the Society's new documentary department in 1961 and in 1965 the first National Geographic special aired, Americans on Everest, produced by David L. Wolper, narrated by Orson Welles with a script by mountaineering writer (and Society member) James Ramsey Ullman. Graced with the trademark state-of-the-art cinematography, it was a ratings winner for CBS and was estimated to have garnered the largest audience share ever for a scheduled documentary broadcast. The Society pumped out further hours, spotlighting the fieldwork of Jane Goodall, Louis, and Richard Leakey, Jacques Cousteau, and Dian Fossey.
Videocassette Boom in the 1970s and 1980s
In 1975 National Geographic began a partnership with PBS, and with the ascent of home-video, Gilbert. M. Grosvenor (grandson of Gilbert H.) oversaw the release to videocassette of National Geographic prime-time outings in the back catalog, from Journey to the High Arctic (1971) to Lost Kingdoms of the Maya (1994) to the behind-the-scenes Cameramen Who Dared (1988).
National Geographic documentary films that have been nominated for Oscars include The Hidden World (1966), with its close-ups of insect life 30 years before the theatrical release of Microcosmos; Journey to the Outer Limits (1974), about Colorado's Outward Bound school for youth; and The Incredible Machine (1975), with diagnostic motion-picture imaging of the interior of the human body. In the Nielsen ratings, The Incredible Machine prevailed over competing network programs—the first time PBS had scored such a victory.
In the 1980s, The Sharks and Land of the Tiger got even higher numbers. Producer Dennis B. Kane, who would also found the World of Discovery series of ABC-TV, is credited as the unsung hero who developed many of these projects.
Modern Documentaries and the First Narrative Film
The Society had surpassed the century mark when National Geographic documentary films contended seriously in the theatrical-feature marketplace in a big way, backing the wide release of The Story of the Weeping Camel and—especially—the worldwide hit March of the Penguins (actually a French film, slightly revised with the now-famous Morgan Freeman narration and, of course, the NatGeo stamp).
In 2002 the National Geographic either marked a milestone or a fall from grace, depending on your outlook, by producing its first narrative feature, the fact-based but decidedly non-documentary submarine drama K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
Other narrative features in which National Geographic—specifically its highly romanticized photojournalists—figure prominently include The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Kodachrome (2010).
Not bad. Unless the North American continent starts to sink under the weight of accumulated National Geographic discs and VHS tapes nobody can bear to throw out.