Ten years — 522 issues — ago our Latin American Edition was founded. Then called TIME Air Express, it was the world's first plane-delivered magazine.
After our south-of-the-border readers approved the experiment, it became the forefather of the various international editions which made The Weekly Newsmagazine as much of a weekly habit in Rangoon as it is in Chicago.
The idea of a magazine light enough to be carried economically by airplane was a natural for TIME. We had always worked on the principle that the quality of reporting and editing — not the amount of paper covered by words — is the proper standard of good journalism.
Therefore, it seemed sensible that we should be the first to put our editorial material into a magazine that would ride the world's airlines in bulk.
Some readers had beaten us to the draw. One fabulous but informed Maharaja had been receiving TIME by air to India, at an annual subscription rate of $585.60. But most subscribers outside continental North America — a staunch little group of 26,000 — waited for their magazines to arrive by ship.
The first "for keeps" test of air delivery began with the May 5 issue in 1941 when the spread of World War II was making hemispheric trade and defense more important than ever before. In fact, the editors had already picked for the cover story Argentina's President Ramón S. Castillo, then tackling the problem of his country's blocked trade to Europe. Twenty thousand copies of this issue, printed on special light paper, were flown by Pan American Clippers to Latin American cities.
Snow in July. These copies reached subscribers ahead of the last three boat-shipped issues. Response was tremendous, the heartening kind that kept us at the job during the hectic war years to follow. High on the new list of readers was Manuel Bianchi, a Chilean who had taken the first Air Express subscription ever sold. Now Ambassador to the Court of St. James's and one of London's senior diplomats, Bianchi recently looked back over the decade of cover-to-cover reading and called TIME'S Latin American Edition "a major instrument for understanding." Added the ambassador: "It helps our countries understand the United States and gives us a fresh look at ourselves." Air Express brought us a hatful of unexpected headaches. We were victimized from distant places by the foibles of nature and of man. Our Buenos Aires subscribers complained enough to make us realize that a July snow over high Andean peaks can ground TIME-carrying planes. Elsewhere, similar protests led us to the certain knowledge that some postmen liked to "collect" American stamps and magazines. Then there were customs, censorship and currency, all subject to violent and sudden change.
Ponies. & Pix. In South America, we gained the experience that helped us fill the wartime need for fast delivery of news all over the world. The next job was a limited edition that we flew over the Nazi submarine blockade to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Dr. Wellington Koo and 1,097 other allied leaders in Britain.