Aui wrote on 2025-03-06, 07:18:

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC – The biggest Big Box […]
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC – The biggest Big Box

Ok – this time I chose something slightly out of the box …
a collection of 31(!) CD-Roms with every NG magazine between 1888 to around 1998.

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I got this for free from a friend – and I was very happy. It is possible to see the images on newish computers (i.e. those still having an optical drive) but to properly navigate the individual issues Win 95 or 98 is required. Interestingly it is published by Broderbund – I had no idea they were publishing things other than games. Browsing through the articles and through the years is a lot of fun, because you inevitably get stuck on something interesting in each issue. Although all in all it’s a bit overwhelming (can’t imagine how it would look to keep such a collection in paper. You could probably store up to 10 RETRO Computers instead !). Of course a lot of articles have aged rather poorly but some are still worth reading.

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What is also really interesting are the advertisements over the years. How about a Trip with a fast ocean liner form Europe to USA ?
Equally cool – early home computer advertisements:

PC Junior anyone ? No ? – too bad…

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That's honestly really cool. When I was a kid I loved software like that. I loved every time we got a new version of Microsoft Encarta in the computer lab in elementary school.

Aui wrote on 2025-03-06, 07:18:

Of course a lot of articles have aged rather poorly but some are still worth reading.

first of all - what a fantastic archive!

its true many articles, especailly those reflecting social norms of the time and scientific beliefs since overturned, have aged but that's some of the pleasure.

the older i get though the less poor the aging seems to be - even from things written before i was born, the same article i'd assume was 'old and out of date' were i to read it when i was 20, now seems so much more informative

old articles from magazines like popular mechanics for instance, and some of the great animated "how it works" type films done in the first half of the 20th century on engineering etc just seem so much clearer than equivalents now

I've been collecting National Geographics since I was a kid. I now have hundreds of them, going back to the 1950s. Unfortunately they'll all boxed up after my last house move. But I intend to put them all back on shelves ASAP.

I remember seeing the NG digital archive (BestBuy maybe) and wanted to get it, but it was expensive at the time. I read a bunch of the magazines when I was young, and my mom would drag me over her friend's house who had stacks of the older issues.

Is there a free PDF archive of those magazines around now?