Encyclopædia Britannica
 |
1913 advertisement for the 11th edition, with the slogan "When in doubt — 'look it up' in the Encyclopædia Britannica" |
The
Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelled with
æ, the ae-
ligature) was first published in 1768–1771 as
Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan. The
Britannica was an important early
English-language general
encyclopaedia and is still regarded as one of the most important reference books in the English language. It is published today by
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., a privately held company.
From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, the
Britannica's articles were often judged as the foremost authority on a topic, and sometimes included new research or theory intended for a scholarly audience. During this era, the
Britannica gained its reputation and had a unique position in English-speaking culture.
The role of the
encyclopaedia changed substantially in the early 20th century, and the Britannica reflected these changes, from the
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, onward. One key change was a shift away from attempting to encompass the cutting edge of human knowledge, a goal made impractical by, among other things, the rapid expansion of scientific knowledge around the turn of the century. A second change reflected a changing readership. As the use of the encyclopedia as a general reference grew, readers expected shorter, more readable articles, rather than the primary authoritative scholarship which had defined earlier versions.
Today, new reference sources, including academic journals, textbooks, specialized publications and electronic resources have redefined, and, more recently nearly eliminated, the demand for the print encyclopedia. The
Britannica has evolved primarily into electronic versions available on
CD-ROM and via the
World Wide Web, though a print edition is still available. It has survived fierce competition from an ever-increasing number of alternative information sources. The articles in the
Britannica are commonly considered accurate, reliable, and well-written, and it continues to be widely consulted as a work of general reference.
A product of the
Scottish Enlightenment, the
Britannica was originally published in
Edinburgh in the second-half of the 18th century. The first
Britannica was the brainchild of
Colin Macfarquhar, a bookseller and printer, and
Andrew Bell, an engraver, who published the reference work
pseudonymously as a "Society of Gentlemen." The editor was scholar
William Smellie, then twenty-eight years old, who was offered
£200 to produce the Encyclopaedia in 100 parts and three volumes. The first part appeared in December 1768, priced six
pence. By 1771, the Encyclopaedia was complete with 2,391 pages and 160 engraved illustrations, and an estimated 3,000 copies were sold. It consisted of three equally sized volumes covering A-B, C-L and M-Z.
It was compiled, as the title-page says, on a new plan. The different sciences and arts were "digested into distinct treatises or systems," of which there are 45 with cross headings, that is, titles printed across the page, and about 30 other articles more than three pages long. The longest are "Anatomy," 166 pages, and "Surgery," 238 pages. "The various technical terms, etc., are explained as they occur in the order of the alphabet." "Instead of dismembering the sciences, by attempting to treat them intelligibly under a multitude of technical terms, they have digested the principles of every science in the form of systems or distinct treatises, and explained the terms as they occur in the order of the alphabet, with references to the sciences to which they belong." This plan, as the compilers say, differs from that of all the previous dictionaries of arts and sciences. Its merit and novelty consist in… on the one hand keeping important subjects together, and on the other facilitating reference by numerous separate articles.[Quoted from: Online Encyclopedia article on encyclopaedia]
Owing to the success of the first edition, a more ambitious second edition followed. This time Smellie declined as editor, and Macfarquhar took over the role himself, aided by
James Tytler. The second edition was eventually published 1777â€"1784 in ten volumes with 8,595 pages.
The plan of the work was enlarged by the addition of history and biography, which encyclopaedias in general had long omitted. "From the time of the second edition of this work, every cyclopaedia of note, in England and elsewhere, has been a cyclopaedia, not solely of arts and sciences, but of the whole wide circle of general learning and miscellaneous information " (Quarterly Review, cxiii. 362).
However, it was the third edition, published 1788–1797 and edited by Macfarquhar and after his death by
George Gleig, which finally realized the encyclopaedic vision. Not only broader in scope, with 18 volumes plus a two volume supplement totalling over 16,000 pages, the third edition was also the first to include articles written specifically for the
Britannica by experts and academics, many recruited by Gleig. The third edition established the foundation of the
Britannica as an important, and in many cases the definitive, reference on many topics for much of the next century.
In general, the major articles in the editions through the tenth edition were far longer and more scholarly than the articles in modern encyclopaedias. For an example, see ELIOHS' online version of the article History from the third edition (in the
external links section below). Nineteenth century editions of the
Britannica regularly included notable new or major works from its authors.
The extraordinary
French Encyclopédie is widely considered to have inspired the publication of the
Britannica. But unlike the
Encyclopédie, the
Britannica was an extremely conservative publication. Later editions were usually dedicated to the reigning
monarch. In dedicating the supplement to the third edition to the King, Gleig wrote,
The French Encyclopédie had been accused, and justly accused, of having disseminated far and wide the seeds of anarchy and atheism. If the Encyclopædia Britannica shall in any degree counteract the tendency of that pestiferous work, even these two volumes will not be wholly unworthy of your Majesty's attention.
Archibald Constable was involved in the publication to varying degrees from 1788 and after Macfarquhar's death in 1793. In 1812 he acquired the
Britannica from its trustees, and published the
Britannica through 1826. The fourth through sixth editions, and the supplement to them, included works by a number of highly-regarded Scottish and English authors and scientists:
William Hazlitt,
John Stuart Mill,
Thomas Malthus,
David Ricardo,
Walter Scott, and
Thomas Young, whose article on Egypt included the translation of the
hieroglyphics on the
Rosetta Stone.
In the late 1820s, rights to the
Britannica were acquired by the
Edinburgh publishing firm of
Adam & Charles Black, who published the seventh and eighth editions, and included new chapters, such as 'Architecture' by
William Hosking. The landmark ninth edition, often called the Scholar's edition, was published from 1875 to 1889. The ninth edition included numerous in-depth, scholarly articles by pre-eminent authors, and therefore is considered by some to mark the high point in the history of English-language encyclopaedias.
A & C Black moved to
London in 1895. The
Britannica later became associated with
The Times newspaper, and was sold in 1901. The tenth edition of eleven volumes including map and index volumes was issued in effect as a large supplement to the ninth edition. The
American Horace Everett Hooper was publisher from 1897 to 1922. From 1909, and for the eleventh edition, the publication became associated with the
University of Cambridge, in
England.
The substantially rewritten eleventh edition of 1910–1911 is also a classic edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, but reflected the new goals of its new owners. The edition balances scholarly accuracy and scope with a readability intended to gain a wider audience and increased sales, using less lengthy but still thorough articles. Sometimes called the
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, this edition is available in the
public domain. The 11th edition was the first edition to be published substantially at one time, instead of volume by volume. The complete text is
freely available online.
The
trademark and publication rights were sold after the 11th edition to
Sears Roebuck and it moved to
Chicago,
Illinois,
United States. The 12th and 13th editions each took the form of a three volume supplement or update, meant to be used in conjunction with the 11th edition. The 14th edition of 1929 marked a major shift, with fewer volumes and shorter articles, meant to be more accessible as a reference to a wider range of readers. However, the 14th edition was criticised by priest-turned-atheist
Joseph McCabe, who claimed that it had been stripped of unfavourable content about the Catholic Church.
Sears Roebuck offered the rights to the
Britannica as a gift to the
University of Chicago in 1941.
William Benton figured as publisher from 1943 to his death in 1973, followed by his widow
Helen Hemingway Benton until her own death in 1974.
In
January 1996, the
Britannica was purchased by billionaire
Swiss financier
Jacob Safra.
In
October 2002,
Esquire editor
A.J. Jacobs set out to read all 33,000 pages of the
Britannica. He chronicled this quest for knowledge in the 2004 book
The Know-It-All (see References below for full citation).
 |
Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe Edition CD-ROM |
In the 1980s,
Microsoft approached Britannica Inc. to collaborate on a
CD-ROM encyclopaedia. Britannica Inc., feeling that they had control of the market and showing strong profits (sales of the complete
Britannica were priced between 1,500 and $2,200), turned Microsoft down. Britannica Inc.'s senior management viewed their product as a luxury brand with an impeccable reputation handed down from generation to generation. They did not believe that a CD-ROM could adequately compete or supplement their business. In turn, Microsoft used content from
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia to create what is now known as
Encarta.
In 1990, the
Britannica's sales reached all-time high of $650 million. But
Encarta, released in 1993, became a software staple with almost every computer purchase and the
Britannica's market share plummeted. Britannica Inc. countered by offering a
CD-ROM version of their product, although a CD-ROM could not generate $500 to $600 in sales commissions as the print version did. Britannica Inc. decided on charging $995 for customers looking to purchase only the CD-ROM while at the same time bundling a free disc with the print version. Britannica Inc. hoped that including the CD-ROM would entice buyers to stay with the brand.
In 1994, Britannica Inc. launched an online version of their encyclopaedia, with subscriptions for sale for $2000. By 1996, the cost of the CD-ROM had dropped to $200. Sales had plummeted to $325 million - about half their 1990 levels. Only 55,000 hard copy versions were sold in 1994, compared with 117,000 in 1990, and sales later fell to 20,000.
["Sales plummeted from 100,000 a year to just 20,000. " Encyclopaedia Britannica changes to survive] Facing financial pressure, Britannica Inc. was purchased by Swiss financier
Jacob Safra in 1996 for $135 million, a fraction of its book value. Since then Safra has introduced massive price-cutting measures in an effort to compete with
Encarta, even offering the entire reference free of charge for a time (around 18 months, from
October 1999 to
March 2001) on the
internet.
Former editor-in-chief
Robert McHenry believes that Britannica failed to exploit its early advantages in the market for electronic encyclopaedias. Britannica had, for example, published the second
multimedia encyclopaedia titled
Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia as early as 1989 (the first one being
Academic American Encyclopedia published by Grolier), but did not launch
Britannica CD until 1994, one year after Microsoft launched their
Encarta encyclopedia. McHenry believes these failures were due to a reluctance among senior management to fully embrace new technology, caused largely by the overriding influence of the sales staff and management. The sales personnel earned commissions from door-to-door selling of the print encyclopaedias, which McHenry believes led to decisions about the distribution and pricing of the electronic products, being driven by the desires of the sales personnel, rather than market conditions and customer expectations.
Today, one of the biggest challenges to the
Britannica is the ease with which people can find information online. Many people simply prefer to find information with the help of a
search engine, such as
Google,
Yahoo! or
Ask.com. While the information available on the internet is typically not as structured and well-vetted as that contained in
Britannica, this is compensated for somewhat by convenience and the sheer volume of information typically available on any subject. Advanced searching algorithms, such as
page rank algorithm used by
Google, also assist an experienced user to quickly narrow down an investigation to relevant pages.
Online alternatives to the
Britannica include
Wikipedia, a
Web-based free-content encyclopaedia. Wikipedia is free to use; however, the print and electronic versions of
Britannica are available at libraries for checkout (either directly or through
ILL) and can be accessed from home using some library web sites.
Substantive comparisons between the
Britannica and Wikipedia may be hard to draw. The journal
Nature reported on
December 14,
2005 that of the 42 science articles it reviewed, there were 162 mistakes in Wikipedia versus 123 for
Britannica.
[Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a] Britannica Inc. attacked
Nature's study as flawed and misleading
[Britannica: Fatally Flawed (PDF)] and demanded a retraction. It mentioned that two of the articles in the study were actually from a
Britannica year book, and not the encyclopaedia. Another two were from
Compton's Encyclopedia (called the
Britannica Student Encyclopedia on the company's web site) and yet another researcher comment is regarding an unknown publication.
Encyclopædia Britannica went on to mention that some of the articles presented to reviewers were actually combinations of several articles.
Britannica continued by citing several facts that were classified as errors by
Nature but were actually not incorrect (e.g. spelling
Crotona as
Crotone).
Nature defended its story and declined to retract it, stating that as it was comparing Wikipedia with the web version of Britannica it used whatever relevant material was available on Britannica's website.
[Nature: Encyclopedia Britannica: a response (PDF)]Comparing
Encyclopædia Britannica to other print encyclopaedias also provides a mixed picture.
Kenneth Kister's
Kister's Best Encyclopedias, 2nd edition (1994) compared the accuracy of several encyclopaedias.
Britannicawas ranked lower than
Encyclopedia Americana, World Book Encyclopedia, and
Compton's Encyclopedia, all of which received perfect scores. Another area in which
Britannica lags when compared to other print reference works is recency.
Kister's ranked
Britannica lower in this respect than the same three aforementioned works, as well.
Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. now owns a
trademark on the word "Britannica." The current version of
Britannica was written by over 4,000 contributors, including noted scholars such as
Milton Friedman,
Michael DeBakey and the late
Carl Sagan. Under the influence of the director of planning,
Mortimer Adler, the 15th edition, first published in 1974 and frequently reissued since, was published not as one alphabetical sequence of volumes as previously but in three parts that covered topics in different degrees of depth: a one-volume
Propædia that provides a structured hierarchy to all the information in the set, a 12-volume Micropædia which contains short articles (most of them from one to five paragraphs), and a 17-volume Macropædia for longer articles, which range from a few pages to over three hundred pages. The Micropædia provides cross-references from articles to more extended treatment in the Macropædia or to other related Micropædia coverage. Macropædia articles deal with topics such as countries, individual sciences and surveys of broad divisions of culture. They contain many subsections which would be covered by individual articles in most encyclopedias. Britannica's intention is to provide systematic surveys of knowledge and to put detail into context. A two-volume index was added in 1985. The print edition continues to be produced, with each version being an updated printing of the 15th edition. Forty-six percent of the content of the encyclopedia has been revised within the last three years.
[1] A new revised print set was issued in 2005.
[2]The
Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD contains over 55 million words and just over 100,000 articles. This includes 73,645 regular Encyclopædia Britannica articles, with the remainder drawn from the
Britannica Student Encyclopædia, the
Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia and the
Britannica Book of the Year (1993-2004), plus a small number of "classic" articles from early editions of the encyclopaedia. The package also includes a range of supplementary content including maps, videos, sound clips, animations and web links. It also offers study tools and dictionary and thesaurus entries from
Merriam-Webster.[
3]
The online version has 118,000+ articles[
4] and is updated daily. It also has daily features and updates and links to news articles from
New York Times and the
BBC. Subscriptions cost $69.95 per year in the United States and £39.99 per annum in the United Kingdom.
[5] Weekly and monthly plans are also available. Special subscription plans are offered to schools, colleges and libraries and this is an important part of Britannica's business.
Dale Hoiberg, a
sinologist, is the publication's current editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors were
Hugh Chisholm (1903â€"1913, 1920â€"1924),
James Louis Garvin (1926â€"1932),
Franklin Henry Hooper (1932â€"1938),
Walter Yust (1938â€"1960),
Harry Ashmore (1960â€"1963),
Warren E. Preece (1964â€"1975), and
Robert McHenry (1992â€"1997).
Ted Pappas is the current executive editor. Earlier holders of that position were
John V. Dodge (1950â€"1964) and
Philip W. Goetz.
Don Yannias, former
CEO of the company when it was in financial difficulties, serves on Britannica's
Board of Directors.
Among the members of an international editorial council planning a new (16th) edition are such notable figures as Nobel laureate in Physics
Murray Gell-Mann, biologist and Nobel laureate
David Baltimore, cognitive scientist
Donald Norman, economist
Amartya Sen, philosopher
Thomas Nagel, former Ecuadorian president
RosalÃa Arteaga and
Pritzker Architecture Prize winner
Zaha Hadid.
There are several abbreviated Britannica encyclopaedias. The single-volume
Britannica Concise Encyclopædia has 28,000 articles;
Compton's by Britannica, which incorporates the former
Compton's Encyclopedia, consists of 26 volumes with a total of 11,000 pages,[
6] and is aimed at secondary school age children;
My First Britannica is aimed at 6 to 12 year olds; and the
Britannica Discovery Library is targeted at pre-school children. Since 1938 Britannica has published annually a
Book of the Year chronicling the past year's events, also available online back to the 1994 edition (covering the events of 1993). Britannica Inc also publishes a number of specialist reference works.
| Edition | Published | Size | Editor(s) |
|---|
| 1st | 3 vol. | William Smellie |
| 2nd | 10 vol. | James Tytler |
| 3rd | 18 vol. + 2 sup. | Colin Macfarquhar and George Gleig |
| 4th | 20 vol. | James Millar |
| 5th | 1815 | James Millar and Thomas Bonar |
| 6th | 1820–1823, 1815â€"1824 sup. | 20 vol. + 6 sup. 1 | Charles Maclaren and Macvey Napier |
| 7th | 21 vol. | Macvey Napier |
| 8th | 22 vol. 2 | Thomas Stewart Traill |
| 9th | 25 vol. 3 | Thomas Spencer Baynes (to 1880, then W. Robertson Smith) |
| 10th | 9th ed. + 11 sup 4 | Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, Hugh Chisholm, and Arthur T. Hadley with Franklin H. Hooper |
| 11th | 1910–1911 | Hugh Chisholm |
| 12th | 11th ed. + 3 sup. 5 | Hugh Chisholm |
| 13th | 1926 | 11th ed. + 3 sup. 6 | James Louis Garvin |
| 14th | 24 vol. 7 | James Louis Garvin with Franklin Henry Hooper |
| 15th | 30 vol. 8 | Mortimer J. Adler, William Benton, and Charles E. Swanson |
| 1985– | 32 vol. 9 |
Edition notes
*vol. = volume
*sup. = supplement
1 Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. With preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences.
2 8th to 14th editions included a separate index volume.
3 9th ed. featured articles by notables of the day, such as James Maxwell on electricity and magnetism, and William Thomson (who became Lord Kelvin) on heat.
4 10th ed. included a maps volume and a cumulative index volume for the 9th and 10th edition volumes: the new volumes, constituting, in combination with the existing volumes of the 9th ed., the 10th ed. ... and also supplying a new, distinctive, and independent library of reference dealing with recent events and developments
5 Vols. 30-32 ... the New volumes constituting, in combination with the twenty-nine volumes of the eleventh edition, the twelfth edition
6 This supplement replaced the previous supplement: The three new supplementary volumes constituting, with the volumes of the latest standard edition, the thirteenth edition.
7 This edition was the first to be kept up to date by continual (usually annual) revision.
8 The 15th edition (introduced as "Britannica 3") was published as multiple sets: the 10-volume Micropædia (containing short articles and served as an index), the 19-volume Macropædia, plus the Propædia (see text).
9 In 1985 the system was modified by removing the index function from the Micropædia and adding a separate two-volume index; the Macropædia articles were further consolidated into fewer, larger ones (for example, the previously separate articles about the 50 U.S. states were all included into the "United States of America" article), with some medium-length articles moved to the Micropædia.
The first CD-ROM edition was issued in 1994. At that time also an online version was offered for paid subscription. In 1999 this was offered for free, and no revised print versions appeared. The experiment was ended, however, in 2001 and a new printed set was issued in 2002. |
* Herman Kogan,
The Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)
* H. Einbinder,
The Myth of the Britannica (New York: Grove Press, 1964)
* A.J. Jacobs,
The Know-It-All : One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004)
*
Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition*
Images from Encyclopædia Britannica*
Encyclopædia Britannica Online ;Current events:
*
Corporate statement by Britannica refuting Wikipedia comparison study (PDF file)*
Britannica disagrees with Wikipedia comparison study;Encyclopaedia history:
*
The history of the encylopaedia on The Scotsman's Heritage and Culture pages;Earlier editions:
*
The article History from the third edition.
*
Scanned version of Encyclopædia Britannica 1911, including the article
Encyclopaedia*
Another scanned version of Encyclopædia Britannica 1911*
Slice of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, as
public domain text on
Project Gutenberg*
James Mill's essay on government, 1820*
Vintage Britannica or "Evolving Knowledge" — excerpts on a single topic selected from various Britannica editions since 1768
;Modern editions:
*
Official website for the current version of Encyclopædia Britannica*
To wire or not to wire? Encyclopædia Britannica vs. Microsoft Encarta A comparison of the two encyclopedias, by Panagiota Alevizou, published by the
Educational Technology & Society journal
;Business history:
*
"Dusting off the Britannica" article from
Business Week (1997)
*
"Death of a salesforce" from Salon (1996)
*
"The Work of the Encyclopedia in the Age of Electronic Reproduction" article by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in "First Monday"
