Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor was the first full-time editor of the National Geographic magazine, serving until 1954. He was appointed to be the magazine editor in 1899 by Alexander Graham Bell, who was his father-in-law. Grosvenor is credited with having built the magazine into an iconic publication, increasing circulation from a few hundred readers to millions of readers. The success of National Geographic was due to his generous support for documentary photography of ethnographic, scientific, geographic, and historical topics, utilization of the most advanced technologies for mass reproduction of photography including the earliest color photography, and brilliance in marketing and distribution. As President of the National Geographic Society, he assisted its rise to being the most widely recognized and esteemed educational learning organization in the world, aided by the chronicling in its magazine of ambitious natural and cultural explorations around the globe.