Time Magazine Prints Its First Issue

On March 3, 1923, Briton Hadden and Henry Luce published the first issue of a weekly news magazine out of New York City. The two had worked together at the Yale Daily News, Hadden as chairman and Luce as managing editor, and they carried that partnership into a new venture built on a simple idea: a busy reader should be able to catch up on the entire week's news in about an hour. They first called the project Facts, then settled on Time, with the slogan Take Time, It's Brief. The debut issue cost fifteen cents and put Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the House, on the cover instead of an event. It became the first weekly news magazine in the United States, and it has run continuously from New York City ever since.