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The Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelt with æ, the ae-ligature) is the oldest English-language general encyclopedia, first published in 1768–1771 as Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan. From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, its articles were often judged by many as the foremost authority on a topic.

Today the Britannica has evolved primarily into electronic versions available on CD-ROM and via the World Wide Web. 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.

History

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 Encyclopedia was complete with 2,391 pages and 160 engraved illustrations, and an estimated 3,000 copies were sold.

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.

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 1777–1784 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 encyclopedic 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 encyclopedias. For an example, see ELIOHS' online version of the article History from the third edition (in #External links 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 Encyclopaedia 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 encyclopedias.

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 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.

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).

CD-ROM edition and Britannica Online

In the 1980s, Microsoft approached Britannica to collaborate on a CD-ROM encyclopedia. Britannica, feeling that they had control of the market and showing strong profits (sales of the complete Britannica were priced between US$1,500 and US$2,200), turned Microsoft down. Britannica'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, Britannica's sales reached all-time high of $650 million. But Encarta, released in 1993, became a staple software with every computer purchase and Britannica's market share plummeted. Britannica countered by offering a CD-ROM version of their product, although a CD-ROM could not generate US$500 to US$600 in sales commissions as the print version did. Britannica 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 hoped that including the CD-ROM would entice buyers to stay with the brand.

In 1994, Britannica launched an online version with subscriptions for sale for US$2000. By 1996, the cost of the CD-ROM had dropped to US$200. Sales had plummeted to US$325 million - about half their 1990 levels (US$650 million). Only 55,000 hard copy versions were sold in 1994, compared to 117,000 in 1990, and sales later fell to 20,000. By the end of 1996, Britannica was in serious trouble and was purchased by Swiss financier Jacob Safra for a fraction of its book value - a mere US$135 million. 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.

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. A particular challenge to Britannica is the emergence of Misplaced Pages which has a size advantage over Britannica (875,000 articles compared to 120,000, and in terms of words, 292 million compared to 55 million) and is free. Britannica's main edge over Misplaced Pages, as a professionally edited resource, is its more consistent reliability: in December 2005, the scientific review Nature published the result of a study of errors in science articles in the two encyclopedias. They found Britannica to average almost three errors per article. By comparison, Misplaced Pages contained close to four errors per article.

Current version

Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. now owns a trademark on the word "Britannica". As of 2004, the most complete version of Encyclopædia Britannica contains about 120,000 articles, with 44 million words, and a comprehensive index, the first of its kind for a major encyclopedia. It is published in paper form (32 volumes containing 65,000 articles, list price US$1400), online (120,000 articles, brief summaries of articles can be viewed for free, and the full text is available for US$11.95 per month or US$69.95 per year for individual subscribers), and on CD-ROM (more than 80,000 articles) or DVD-ROM (more than 100,000 articles, US$50).

The current version of Britannica was written by over 4,000 contributors, including noted scholars such as Milton Friedman, Carl Sagan, and Michael DeBakey. 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 10-volume Micropædia which contains short articles, a 19-volume Macropædia for longer articles. A two-volume index was added in 1985. Thirty-five percent of the content of the encyclopedia has been re-written within the last two years.

Dale Hoiberg, a sinologist, is the publication's current editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors were Hugh Chisholm (1903–1913, 1920–1924), James Louis Garvin (1926–1932), Franklin Henry Hooper (1932–1938), Walter Yust (1938–1960), Harry S. Ashmore (1960–1963), Warren E. Preece (1964–1975), and Robert McHenry (1992–1997). Ted Pappas is the current executive editor. Earlier holders of that position were John V. Dodge (1950–1964) 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 biologist David Baltimore, cognitive scientist Donald Norman, economist Amartya Sen, philosopher Thomas Nagel, and former Ecuadorian president Rosalía Arteaga.

Edition history

References

• 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)

See also

• Images from Encyclopædia Britannica

External links

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
• The Lies And Fallacies Of The Encyclopædia Britannica. How Powerful And Shameless Clerical Forces Castrated A Famous Work Of Reference by Joseph McCabe, c. 1947. Tract that claims to show systematic religious bias in the Britannica of the time.
• 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
• One reader's catalogue of errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Errors in Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Misplaced Pages
• 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)

• Encyclopedias