The Explorers: A Century of Discovery Page #3

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But the National Geographic

remained much the same.

The Magazine had become a fixture in

school libraries and doctor's offices.

Society members wrote to editors as

if they were old friends.

And almost all collected the Magazine

because they couldn't bear

to throw it away.

Techniques of color reproduction were

by now far advanced.

And no one published more

or finer color photographs

than National Geographic.

There could only be one subject

for the first color cover,

published the war.

But not until 1959 did a picture on

the cover become a regular feature.

Wherever war did not reach,

explorers carried on.

A number of expeditions to Mexico,

led by Dr. Matthew Stirling,

revealed a mysterious pre-Columbian

culture called the Olmec.

A series of dramatic discoveries

included the excavation

of a gigantic stone head

weighing 25 tons.

The work pushed the existence of

pre-Columbian civilization in America

further into antiquity and carried on

a Geographic tradition of leadership

in New World archeology.

The war had barely ended when,

on the coast of France,

a new species of man appeared.

Led by Jacques-Yves Cousteau,

these creatures, awkward on land,

were originally called "fish men".

Co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung Cousteau

revolutionized undersea exploration.

National Geographic photographer

Luis Marden eagerly followed Cousteau

into a dazzling new world.

Cousteau once remarked:

when we are invited to

live on this earth.

There is no reason we should not

visit the basement.

But unlike some explorers before him,

Cousteau sought not to conquer

but to cherish the creatures of the sea.

By the 1950s there were

few places on earth

that did not bear the mark of man.

One of them was the summit

of Mount Everest, 29,028 feet high,

the last great prize of

the classic explorer.

An era came to an end with

this National Geographic article

and when President Dwight Eisenhower

gave the Society's Hubbard Medal

to the British Everest

Expedition leader,

Sir John Hunt,

and climber Sir Edmund Hillary.

But there would be new adventures

and new ways to share them.

The first National Geographic

TV Special documented the

American expedition to Everest,

led by Norman Dyhrenfurth.

The climbing team of 19 Americans

and 32 Nepaless Sherpas

made the attempt.

And, on television, tens of millions

would later share the adventure.

And on the morning of May 1st,

the peak is boiling in

its plume of snow.

Those below were sure that there

would be no summit attempt that day.

But they were wrong.

Big Jim and Gombu decide to

make their try,

and for hour after hour inch up the

battlements of the Southeast Ridge.

For a while Norman Dyhrenfurth and

Ang Dawa climb after them.

But the cold is too bitter,

the wind too fierce.

Filmmaking is all but impossible.

At last Norman and Ang Dawa turn back.

Jim and Gombu go on alone.

At last...

They are there

on top of the world.

Jim Whittaker and Nawang Gombu.

At one o'clock on the afternoon

of May first,

Whittaker planted the American

flag on the summit,

and with it the flag of

the National Geographic Society.

These are the first moving pictures

ever taken from the summit of Everest.

Some one-and-a-half

million photographs more than

forty thousand rolls of film are

turned in here in Washington each year.

It's a staggering task merely to

catalog and store them.

All the elements are there.

Nice lady with her family.

The world, and all that is in it that

was Alexander Graham Bell's modest

description of the Society's mission.

So editors, writers,

and researchers try valiantly

to do the impossible in books

and other publications, maps and films

as well as the 12 annual

issues of the Magazine.

A typical mind-boggling

Geographic statistic:

the press run of one Magazine issue

would make a stack 53 miles high.

The original vision of Gilbert

Grosvenor had been far exceeded

by the time of his death in 1966.

Leadership has passed to his son,

Melville Bell Grosvenor,

Editor of the Magazine for

ten brilliant years.

Now Gilbert M. Grosvenor is

President of the Society,

continuing family traditions that

have taken him all over the world,

and even to the North Pole.

I think it all started when my

grandfather flew over the North Pole.

And this was, I guess, in about maybe

the 50s early 50s

because I was still in college.

And he sent us a little postcard.

It had the North Pole

and it had the lines of

longitude and latitude

and where they all met.

And he signed it and said,

I flew over the footsteps of Robert E.

And then my father he

flew over the North Pole,

and he did the same thing.

He sent me a postcard.

And I was kind of getting tired of this.

Gilbert Grosvenor's visit the

pole had a new twist.

Accompanied by underwater

photographer Al Giddings

and Canadian explorer Joe MacInnis,

he would join the select few

who have ventured under

the ice at 90 North.

Under six feet of ice, in 29 water,

human life hangs by

the slenderest of threads.

As fragile as the flame

of a single candle,

the human spirit trembles here,

Even as it did in the time of Peary.

Have you ever?

Have you ever?

Seventy years ago this flag came to

the North Pole with Robert E. Peary.

Terrific.

And it's a great pleasure

to bring it back.

We say we have explored the earth.

But there are still regions almost as

remote as the surface of the moon.

Most dramatically,

seven-tenths of the earth's surface

is covered with water,

and we have only a hazy idea of what

is hidden beneath the waves.

You ready for me?

This is "Project Beebe",

a pioneering study of

life in the deep ocean.

The remarkable Dr. Eugenie Clark,

University of Maryland zoologist

and shark expert,

is the principal scientist.

I don't know about that laser the

laser-sighted Canon on the front.

The project is the brainchild

of Emory Kristof,

A National Geographic photographer

who is an expert on deep-sea

exploration and photography.

Aboard the research submersible

Pisces VI,

Dr. Clark will descend several thousand

feet to the ocean floor

and remain there up to 12 hours.

She'll use the submersible as a

deep-sea observation post,

attracting marine animals with bait.

Here off Bermuda, William Beebe made

his epic dives 50 years ago.

And the curiosity that drove him

now inspires Dr. Clark.

Never though I'd be doing this.

You know, as a child, I worshipped

Beebe and read all his books

and wanted to go down in the

bathysphere the way he did.

Never really though I'd do it,

but I wanted to.

This one is huge. This one is big.

Oh, my gosh!

Within minutes deep-sea sharks appear.

Up to 20 feet long,

these six gill sharks have only rarely

been seen alive.

Yeah, it really is exciting.

Wow! You ought to see the

size of this one.

We've got the biggest one so far.

He's right outside the window now.

It will take generations to fully

explore this mysterious deep frontier.

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