The National Geographic Society was founded at the end of the 1800s, a time of change and discovery all over the world. Its monthly journal, National Geographic, reflects the thirst for travel, discovery, and new experiences that marked the turn of the century from the nineteenth to the twentieth. From its first issue in 1888, it was clear that National Geographic was not a boring scientific journal. Filled with color pictures of people and lands that were exotic and unusual to its American audience, the journal captured the imagination of readers of all ages.

In 1888, thirty-three members of the Cosmos Club, an elite Washington, D.C., club of professional men, joined together to form a society to learn and spread knowledge about the lands and peoples of the earth. The leaders of this National Geographic Society, whose early presidents included famed inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922), were determined...