TIME was first published on March 3, 1923 as a newsmagazine which summarized and organized the news so that "busy men" could stay informed. Here are some articles to help you learn more about the history of TIME and how it has evolved since its founding more than 80 years ago.
The evening that the first issue went to press (and many press nights thereafter), the entire full-time staff got into a taxicab, carrying the entire editorial reference library (Who's Who, World Almanac, Congressional Directory) and drove to the printers on Manhattan's 11th Avenue. 
From Anniversary
Feb. 28, 1938
In the beginning years, Hadden was TIME'S editor, Luce its business manager; later, by agreement, they switched jobs. Editor Hadden liked to liven things up by scoffing in print at advertisers' wares....The double-jointed adjectives and inverted sentences of the early days of TIME were tricks that he and Luce, both Greek scholars, had learned from Homer. Hadden applied them so brilliantly that the double-distilled result was hailed as a "new" style, and became TIME'S prose pattern, changing gradually as the magazine matured.
From Posthumous Portrait
May. 9, 1949
TIME, founded on the notion that a surplus of news existed which had to be licked into usable shape, felt no need to gather its own news until the 1930s.
From The Story Of An Experiment
Mar. 8, 1948
TIME was full of innovations in journalism. It was the first national weekly that tried to be both comprehensive and systematic in its coverage. It packaged the news of the week into departments, hired researchers to provide background, and soon began to develop what came to be known as TIMEstyle.
From He Ran the Course
Mar. 10, 1967
We have generally avoided bylines for one major reason: most of our stories are the result of a collaboration among many individuals, so that credit is difficult if not impossible to apportion.
From A Letter From The Publisher
Jul. 13, 1970
Today we like to think that some of the old irreverence is still there, though the flipness and the elaborate convolutions of the early "TIME style" are long gone. As for American and Western values, TIME very consciously maintains its faith in them.
From TIME at 60
By Henry Grunwald
Oct. 5, 1983
In 1929 Hadden died unexpectedly of a blood infection. Luce, though stunned, took the magazine in his strong hands. From then on, Time Inc. was his company and reflected his view of its mission--a view that intersected, much more successfully than Hadden's probably would have, with the character of the age.
From To See And Know Everything
By Alan Brinkley
Mar. 9, 1998
Although our stories often have a strong point of view, we try to make sure they are informed by open-minded reporting rather than partisan biases. Yes, that represents a change from the days when Luce's global agendas infused these pages.
From Luce's Values--Then And Now
By Walter Isaacson
Mar. 9, 1998
Born of the Wasp male ascendancy in a self-confidently patriarchal age, the magazine (which routinely used the word men to mean everyone) has passed, along with its parent company, through a series of self-transformations, from an age of industry and structured authority into a post-cold war era of free-flowing information and diversity.
From The Time Of Our Lives
By Lance Morrow
Mar. 9, 1998
Luce and Hadden's TIME showed that journalism, the rough draft of history, could illuminate momentous events by profiling the gifted and powerful personalities who helped shape them. Nowhere more so than in TIME's selection of a Person of the Year, which has been a highlight since 1927.
From The 75th Anniversary Of Person of the Year
Dec. 30, 2002
When Briton Hadden and Henry Luce invented the newsmagazine in 1923, they had the brash idea that TIME would 'serve the modern necessity of keeping people informed.' Hadden and Luce were clearly on to something: today TIME is by far the world's largest newsmagazine, with more than 5 million subscribers. Our mission has also evolved with the times, so every week we try to offer readers an unparalleled mix of reporting, analysis, photography and graphics, all designed to help you better understand an increasingly complex world.
From How We Cover War and Uncover History
By James Kelly
Mar. 31, 2003