September 15, 2007
Forbes Turns 90 Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 06:55 PM EST Readers may enjoy knowing that the first issue of Forbes magazine was published 90 years ago today. Forbes Inc. is the parent company of American Heritage and AmericanHeritage.com, so this is a family event of sorts. While Forbes was certainly not the first American publication to devote itself principally to business coverage, that it premiered on the eve of the Jazz Age and soon inspired competitors like Fortune (which Henry Luce launched in 1930) and Business Week (McGraw Hill, 1929) is probably not without significance. The 1920s were, after all, a period of dynamic economic growth and innovation. Between 1921 and 1924 America’s gross national product skyrocketed, aggregate wages rose steadily, and the United States, which entered World War I a debtor nation, emerged as Europe’s largest creditor. Wealth seemed to breed innovation. It took more than a hundred years for the U.S. Patent Office to issue its millionth patent in 1911; within 15 years it had issued its two-millionth. There was, in short, a lot of business to be covered. Forbes also managed to tap a growing market for celebrity coverage in an age when businessmen were regarded as celebrities. In the decade following World War I, the average number of profiles that The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers published nearly doubled, and while leaders of industry now had to share column space with key figures in entertainment and sports, the growth of celebrity journalism only made a product like Forbes all the more viable. In publishing, timing is everything. Ninety years ago, B. C. Forbes was right on time.
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