My brother is on holiday with his wife and I am watering their plants every weekend. He told me that there were hundreds of copies of National Geographics in a box that the previous owner of his house had left there and I could take them if I am interested. Just what I needed: something to read on the GO train.

The copies are from the ninties but there is one from 1963. Today I took it with me in the morning.

Wow, is it ever different from today's edition. Here are the differences:

Layout of the ads: There are 20 pages of ads in the beginning and 10 pages of ads at the end. There are no ads whatsoever in between. I could have opened the magazine on page 21 and read all the articles without ever encoutering ads. I thought they had invented a more agressive ad campaign by 1963 but I guess not.
Pricing: it cost $1 / copy and $8 / annual subscription or $6.5 for members.
The table of contents is located on the outside front cover and there is nothing inside the magaznie. There are no letters to the editor section and I couldn't find the editorial but maybe I just didn't look hard enough.
Content: There are 4 full length stories and I couldn't read any of them because they are extremely lengthy and I found them boring. I ended up reading the captions only for the photos. People back then must have had tons of time on their hands. I didn't feel like the editors are trying to grab my attention over and over again. I felt bored and stopped reading. Today, it takes an average male 3 and an average female 5 seconds to navigate away from a website if they don't find it interesting.
Photos: many of the photos were captioned with similar text: "Taken by Nathional Geograpic Staff member XY. Timed shot. The lens on the camera shorten the perspective making the hills appear closer."
I guess times shots were a new invention then and they messing with photos was a big deal. Now, there are webcams and Photoshop.

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1963

National Geographic, December 1963

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