Industrial Context: History of Magazines

1586: Josse Amman, a Swiss painter, publishes plates on the fashions of the day, with the title Gunasceum, sive Theatrum Mulierum ... (The Gynasceuym or Theatre of Women, in which are reproduced by engraving the female costumes of all the nations of Europe). Published in Frankfort in Latin; regarded as the first fashion magazine.

1693: The Ladies Mercury published by John Dunton, at first monthly and then fortnightly. It concerned 'all the nice and curious questions concerning love, marriage, behaviour, dress, and humour in the female sex, whether virgins, wives, or widows.' It also carried an 'Answers to Correspondents' section.

1711: John Tipper publishes The Ladies Diary or Woman's Almanack.

1725: The Ladies Diary runs small ads, among them for false teeth. Later issues ran display adverts for beauty products. Until this time, the term 'advertising' meant feature articles and reports.

1731: The Gentleman's Magazine is published by Edward Cave in England. Intended to entertain with essays, stories, poems, and political commentary. Closed 1914. Often regarded as the first modern magazine.

1734: Lloyd's List, the shipping trade title, founded.

1741: First US magazine, American Magazine.

1742: Ben Franklin's General Magazine prints first US magazine advertisements.

1796: German Alois Senefelder develops lithography to produce high-quality printed images.

1828: Modern Spectator founded.

1835: Railway Gazette founded.

1839: Fox Talbot produces photographs from negatives.

1841: Punch launched in London; inspired by French magazine Charivari.

1850: The number of magazines published in the US reaches 685.

1852: Mills in Germany begin producing wood pulp for papermaking, replacing rag-based paper for newspaper and magazine printing.

1853: The Field launched.

1861: First colour photography.

1871: Charles Austin Bates establishes the first advertising agency offering “creative services.”

1882: Photos sent by wire.

1885: The Graphic publishes a photo-picture story about a visit to a zoo.

1886: Cosmopolitan launched in the US as a fiction magazine. First Berne Copyright Convention.

1890: 4,400 magazines reach 18 million circulations in the US.

1890s: Football clubs publish programmes and magazines.

1892: Four colour rotary press. Vogue founded by Arthur Turnure and Harry McVikar.

1893: In the US, Frank Munsey cuts the price of Munsey’s Magazine to 10c and the cost of subscriptions to $1 to boost sales and seek profits from advertising revenue rather than copy sales. McLure’s Magazine launched by Samuel McLure achieves high sales using a cheap cover price model (10c) and ‘muckraking journalism.’

1894: Billboard Advertising launched in the US; becomes Billboard in 1897.

1895: First issue of US magazine The Bookman.

1900: British magazines widely distributed around the empire and the US.

1909: Conde Nast buys Vogue, by then a struggling New York society weekly. Under editor Edna Woolman Chase, it becomes a photo-fashion monthly for upmarket women.

1911: Photoplay launched in the US, a movie fan magazine.

1918: Reader's Digest launched (US).

1919: Under editor George Horace Lorimer, Saturday Evening Post published a 200-page issue, 111 pages being advertising. The publication was by this time selling a million copies a week with famous authors and Normal Rockwell’s covers.

1933: Photo-based news magazines start to appear in the UK on the lines of the German titles: Pictoral Weekly; Weekly Illustrated (1934); Picture Post (1938).

1934: Radio Times overtakes John Bull as the biggest-selling magazine, with sales of 2 million a week, a position it would hold until 1993.

1937: Odhams (now IPC) opens a printing plant in Watford, Herts with Speedry Gravure Process for colour printing. Launches Woman weekly in June with low cover price, 2d, for a full-colour magazine. Within a year, the title was selling 500,000 copies a week. Saturday Evening Post selling 3 million copies a week, the largest circulation in the US.

1940: The Luftwaffe mounts its Blitz, focusing on the manufacturing cities such as Birmingham and Coventry and ports such as Liverpool and London. The area around St Paul’s Cathedral and along Fleet Street is devastated. Paternoster Row – the centre of the publishing trade – is flattened and the publishers never return to the area.

1946: More than 200 mass-oriented magazines launched in the US.

1970: TV Times claims to be ‘the most used weekly colour magazine in Britain’ on the strength of selling 3,125,000 copies a week with a readership on 10,224,000.

1972: Cosmopolitan UK is the first international edition. Under Joyce Hopkirk; had been reformulated by Helen Gurley Brown in the US. Goes on to become the world’s best-selling woman’s magazine – and best-selling in the UK until the arrival of Glamour in 2002. Feminist monthly Spare Rib launched by Marsh Rowe and Rosie Boycott. WHSmith refused to stick it. Grew out of the underground press.

1982: Computer magazines, such as Acorn User at Addison-Wesley in London, start to use e-mail systems and online bulletin boards, in this case, Dialcom.

1985: Postscript-based software, such as Aldus Pagemaker and Adobe Illustrator running on Apple Mac, allied to laser printers, herald the advent of desktop publishing. This revolutionises the production of magazines and newspapers.

1994: IPC launches Loaded with James Brown as the editor – the start of a boom in ‘lads’ magazine. First banner advertising on the web, for Wired magazine (US). December issue of Vogue carries a half-page advertisement for www.condenast.co.uk.