I was aware that this day was coming up so when I was up at my parents and I noticed that they had a old National Geographic about...and I mean old, I asked if I could steal it for a bit. They’d used it for research on one of their books a few years ago and they weren’t using it. I stashed it away for a while until today came around and I could celebrate by looking through it.
Well clearly this is awesome. The articles were interesting but mainly because of what they considered far away and ‘wild’ back in 1926. Two of the main features are on events and people from Italy and Poland. The world is just a much smaller place nowadays.
I also loved the ‘Sixteen pages of illustrations in full colour’ being boasted about on the cover. They were kinda beautiful and clearly pushing the limits of what could be printed back then.
The best parts of the magazine as far as I’m concerned though are the adverts. I did a pretty thorough leafing through to try to find any old-timey misogynistic ads but surprisingly couldn’t find any, kudos to National Geographic. I loved these ones...
I was wondering if it was particularly expensive back in the day so I did the conversion and interestingly it actually comes out to roughly the same price as a copy costs now. ($0.50 in 1926 is roughly $7.11 in 2019.)
National Geographic day...7/10 I loved going through this old copy and seeing how they portrayed the world back then. I subscribed to it for a few years and used to really enjoy reading it, supporting it as a publication and the photography standards. When it became a part of the Murdoch empire and gave up it’s non-profit status though I cancelled my subscription. I’m very conscious of voting with my purchasing decisions and I didn’t want to give them my money anymore.