Explorers Hall

Washington DC: The National Geographic Society, 1965. Presumed First Edition/First Printing. Wraps. Good. B. Anthony Stewart, Emory Kristof, Robert S. Oakes. 54 pages. Approximately 7 inches by 9 inches. Illustrations (some in color). Diagram. Illustrated cover. List of publications. Cover has some wear and soiling. Somewhat shaken. This appears to have been prepared for the opening of Explorers Hall. Melville Bell Grosvenor wrote in the introductory narrative "My pulse quickened to think that soon we would open our doors to an exciting new museum of science and exploration. Each exhibit would demonstrate, in color, sound, and motion, a milestone in man's conquest of earth, sea, and sky. To each visitor Explorers Hall would be a personal adventure of discovery, and this souvenir guidebook, a passport to that adventure." The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history. The National Geographic Society's logo is a yellow portrait frame - rectangular in shape - which appears on the margins surrounding the front covers of its magazines and as its television channel logo. It also operates a website that features extra content and worldwide events. A guide book is "a book of information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourists". It will usually include information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects. A forerunner of the guidebook was the periplus, an itinerary from landmark to landmark of the ports along a coast. A periplus such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was a manuscript document that listed, in order, the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. This work was possibly written in the middle of the 1st century CE. It served the same purpose as the later Roman itinerarium of road stops.The periegesis, or "progress around" was an established literary genre during the Hellenistic age. A lost work by Agaclytus describing Olympia ( ) is referred to by the Suda and Photius. Dionysius Periegetes (literally, Dionysius the Traveller) was the author of a description of the habitable world in Greek hexameter verse written in a terse and elegant style, intended for the klismos traveller rather than the actual tourist on the ground; he is believed to have worked in Alexandria and to have flourished around the time of Hadrian. An early "remarkably well-informed and interesting guidebook" was the Hellados Periegesis (Descriptions of Greece) of Pausanias of the 2nd century A.D. This most famous work is a guide to the interesting places, works of architecture, sculpture, and curious customs of Ancient Greece, and is still useful to Classicists today. With the advent of Christianity, the guide for the European religious pilgrim became a useful guidebook. An early account is that of the pilgrim Egeria, who visited the Holy Land in the 4th century CE and left a detailed itinerary. In the medieval Arab world, guide books for travelers in search of ancient Near Eastern artifacts, monuments and treasures were written by Arabic treasure hunters and alchemists. This was particularly the case in Arab Egypt, where ancient Egyptian antiquities were highly valued.