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The (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
for "British Encyclopædia") is a
general knowledge
General knowledge is information that has been accumulated over time through various mediums and sources. It excludes specialized learning that can only be obtained with extensive training and information confined to a single medium. General kn ...
English-language
encyclopaedia
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
. It is published by
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a British-American company known for publishing the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia, as well as extensive digital efforts—including text and audiovisual ...
; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various times through the centuries. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes
and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an
online encyclopaedia.
Printed for 244 years, the ''Britannica'' was the longest running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital of
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
, as three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size: the second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810) it had expanded to 20 volumes. Its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th (1875–1889) and
11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Starting with the 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the ''Britannica'' shortened and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market. In 1933, the ''Britannica'' became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule. In March 2012, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced it would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on the online version.
The 15th edition has a three-part structure: a 12-volume of short articles (generally fewer than 750 words), a 17-volume of long articles (two to 310 pages), and a single volume to give a
hierarchical outline of knowledge. The was meant for quick fact-checking and as a guide to the ; readers are advised to study the outline to understand a subject's context and to find more detailed articles. Over 70 years, the size of the ''Britannica'' has remained steady, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. Though published in the United States since 1901, the ''Britannica'' has for the most part maintained
British English spelling.
Present status
Print version
![Encyclopaedia Britannica 15 with 2002](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Encyclopaedia_Britannica_15_with_2002.jpg)
Since 1985, the ''Britannica'' had four parts: the , the , the , and a two-volume index. The ''Britannica'' articles are found in the and , which encompass 12 and 17 volumes, respectively, each volume having roughly one thousand pages. The 2007 has 699 in-depth articles, ranging in length from 2 to 310 pages and having references and named contributors. In contrast, the 2007 has roughly 65,000 articles, the vast majority (about 97%) of which contain fewer than 750 words, no references, and no named contributors.
The articles are intended for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more thorough information in the . The articles are meant both as authoritative, well-written articles on their subjects and as storehouses of information not covered elsewhere.
The longest article (310 pages) is on the United States, and resulted from the merger of the articles on the individual states. A 2013 "Global Edition" of ''Britannica'' contained approximately forty thousand articles.
Information can be found in the ''Britannica'' by following the
cross-references in the and ; however, these are sparse, averaging one cross-reference per page.
Hence, readers are recommended to consult instead the alphabetical index or the , which organizes the ''Britannica'' contents by topic.
The core of the is its "Outline of Knowledge", which aims to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge.
Accordingly, the Outline is consulted by the ''Britannica'' editors to decide which articles should be included in the and .
The Outline is also intended to be a study guide, to put subjects in their proper perspective, and to suggest a series of ''Britannica'' articles for the student wishing to learn a topic in depth.
However, libraries have found that it is scarcely used, and reviewers have recommended that it be dropped from the encyclopaedia.
The also has color transparencies of human anatomy and several appendices listing the staff members, advisors, and contributors to all three parts of the ''Britannica''.
Taken together, the and comprise roughly 40 million words and 24,000 images.
The two-volume index has 2,350 pages, listing the 228,274 topics covered in the ''Britannica'', together with 474,675 subentries under those topics.
The ''Britannica'' generally prefers
British spelling
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American ...
over
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
;
for example, it uses ''colour'' (not ''color''), ''centre'' (not ''center''), and ''encyclopaedia'' (not ''encyclopedia''). However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as ''defense'' rather than ''defence''. Common alternative spellings are provided with cross-references such as "Color: ''see'' Colour."
Since 1936, the articles of the ''Britannica'' have been revised on a regular schedule, with at least 10% of them considered for revision each year.
According to one Britannica website, 46% of its articles were revised over the past three years; however, according to another Britannica website, only 35% of the articles were revised.
The alphabetization of articles in the and follows strict rules.
Diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
al marks and non-English letters are ignored, while numerical entries such as "
1812, War of" are alphabetized as if the number had been written out ("Eighteen-twelve, War of"). Articles with identical names are ordered first by persons, then by places, then by things. Rulers with identical names are organized first alphabetically by country and then by chronology; thus,
Charles III
Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales and, at age 73, became the oldest person t ...
of France precedes
Charles I of England
Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after hi ...
, listed in ''Britannica'' as the ruler of Great Britain and Ireland. (That is, they are alphabetized as if their titles were "Charles, France, 3" and "Charles, Great Britain and Ireland, 1".) Similarly, places that share names are organized alphabetically by country, then by ever-smaller political divisions.
In March 2012, the company announced that the 2010 edition would be the last printed version. This was announced as a move by the company to adapt to the times and focus on its future using digital distribution. The peak year for the printed encyclopaedia was 1990 when 120,000 sets were sold, but it dropped to 40,000 in 1996. 12,000 sets of the 2010 edition were printed, of which 8,000 had been sold . By late April 2012, the remaining copies of the 2010 edition had sold out at Britannica's online store. , a replica of Britannica's 1768 first edition is sold on the online store.
Related printed material
''Britannica Junior'' was first published in 1934 as 12 volumes. It was expanded to 15 volumes in 1947, and renamed ''Britannica Junior Encyclopædia'' in 1963. It was taken off the market after the 1984 printing.
![Children's Britannica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Children%27s_Britannica.jpg)
A British ''Children's Britannica'' edited by
John Armitage was issued in London in 1960. Its contents were determined largely by the
eleven-plus standardized tests given in Britain.
[''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 1988] Britannica introduced the ''Children's Britannica'' to the US market in 1988, aimed at ages seven to 14.
In 1961, a 16 volume ''Young Children's Encyclopaedia'' was issued for children just learning to read.
''My First Britannica'' is aimed at children ages six to 12, and the ''Britannica Discovery Library'' is for children aged three to six (issued 1974 to 1991).
There have been, and are, several abridged ''Britannica'' encyclopaedias. The single-volume ''Britannica Concise Encyclopædia'' has 28,000 short articles condensing the larger 32-volume ''Britannica''; there are authorized translations in languages such as Chinese
and
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
.
''Compton's by Britannica'', first published in 2007, incorporating the former ''
Compton's Encyclopedia
''Compton's Encyclopedia and Fact-Index'' is a home and school encyclopedia first published in 1922 as ''Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia''. The word "Pictured" was removed from the title with the 1968 edition.Encyclopædia Britannica, 1988. The en ...
'', is aimed at 10- to 17-year-olds and consists of 26 volumes and 11,000 pages.
Since 1938,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a British-American company known for publishing the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia, as well as extensive digital efforts—including text and audiovisual ...
has published annually a ''Book of the Year'' covering the past year's events. A given edition of the ''Book of the Year'' is named in terms of the year of its publication, though the edition actually covers the events of the previous year. The company also publishes several specialized reference works, such as ''Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard'' (Wiley, 2006).
Optical disc, online, and mobile versions
The ''
Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2012 DVD'' contains over 100,000 articles. This includes regular ''Britannica'' articles, as well as others drawn from the ''Britannica Student Encyclopædia'', and the ''Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia.'' The package 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.
''Britannica'' Online is a website with more than 120,000 articles and is updated regularly. It has daily features, updates and links to news reports from ''The New York Times'' and the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. , roughly 60% of Encyclopædia Britannica's revenue came from online operations, of which around 15% came from subscriptions to the consumer version of the websites.
, subscriptions were available on a yearly, monthly or weekly basis. Special subscription plans are offered to schools, colleges and libraries; such institutional subscribers constitute an important part of Britannica's business. Beginning in early 2007, the ''Britannica'' made articles freely available if they are hyperlinked from an external site. Non-subscribers are served pop-ups and advertising.
On 20 February 2007, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced that it was working with mobile phone search company
AskMeNow to launch a mobile encyclopaedia. Users will be able to send a question via text message, and AskMeNow will search ''Britannica'' 28,000-article concise encyclopaedia to return an answer to the query. Daily topical features sent directly to users' mobile phones are also planned.
On 3 June 2008, an initiative to facilitate collaboration between online expert and amateur scholarly contributors for Britannica's online content (in the spirit of a
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
), with editorial oversight from Britannica staff, was announced. Approved contributions would be credited, though contributing automatically grants Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. perpetual, irrevocable license to those contributions.
On 22 January 2009, Britannica's president,
Jorge Cauz, announced that the company would be accepting edits and additions to the online ''Britannica'' website from the public. The published edition of the encyclopaedia will not be affected by the changes.
Individuals wishing to edit the ''Britannica'' website will have to register under their real name and address prior to editing or submitting their content.
All edits submitted will be reviewed and checked and will have to be approved by the encyclopaedia's professional staff.
Contributions from non-academic users will sit in a separate section from the expert-generated ''Britannica'' content, as will content submitted by non-''Britannica'' scholars.
Articles written by users, if vetted and approved, will also only be available in a special section of the website, separate from the professional articles.
Official ''Britannica'' material would carry a "Britannica Checked" stamp, to distinguish it from the user-generated content.
On 14 September 2010, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced a partnership with mobile phone development company
Concentric Sky
Concentric Sky is a software development company located in Eugene, Oregon. The company was founded in 2005 by Wayne Skipper, and grew to nearly 90 employees prior its sale to Instructure in April 2022. In 2015, Cale Bruckner was promoted to Pres ...
to launch a series of
iPhone products aimed at the
K-12 market. On 20 July 2011, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced that Concentric Sky had ported the Britannica Kids product line to Intel's
Intel Atom
Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of IA-32 and x86-64 instruction set ultra-low-voltage processors by Intel Corporation designed to reduce electric consumption and power dissipation in comparison with ordinary processors of the Intel Co ...
-based
Netbooks
Netbook was a commonly used term that identified a product class of small and inexpensive laptops which were sold from 2007 to around 2013. These machines were designed primarily as cost-effective tools for consumers to access the Inte ...
and on 26 October 2011 that it had launched its encyclopedia as an
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...
app. In 2010, Britannica released Britannica ImageQuest, a database of images.
In March 2012, it was announced that the company would cease printing the encyclopaedia set, and that it would focus more on its online version.
On 7 June 2018, Britannica released a
Google Chrome extension
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macO ...
, Britannica Insights, which shows snippets of information from Britannica Online in a sidebar for
Google Search
Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world.
The ...
results.
The Britannica sidebar does not replace Google's sidebar and is instead placed above Google's sidebar.
Britannica Insights was also available as a
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...
extension but this was taken down due to a
code review
Code review (sometimes referred to as peer review) is a software quality assurance activity in which one or several people check a program mainly by viewing and reading parts of its source code, and they do so after implementation or as an interr ...
issue.
Personnel and management
Contributors
The print version of the ''Britannica'' has 4,411 contributors, many eminent in their fields, such as Nobel laureate economist
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
, astronomer
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ext ...
, and surgeon
Michael DeBakey
Michael Ellis DeBakey (September 7, 1908 – July 11, 2008) was a Lebanese-American general and cardiovascular surgeon, scientist and medical educator who became Chairman of the Department of Surgery, President, and Chancellor of Baylor College ...
.
Roughly a quarter of the contributors are deceased, some as long ago as 1947 (
Alfred North Whitehead), while another quarter are retired or
emeritus. Most (approximately 98%) contribute to only a single article; however, 64 contributed to three articles, 23 contributed to four articles, 10 contributed to five articles, and 8 contributed to more than five articles. An exceptionally prolific contributor is
Christine Sutton
Christine Sutton is a particle physicist who edited the '' CERN Courier'' from 2003 to 2015. She retired from CERN in 2015.
Sutton was previously based at the University of Oxford, working in the Particle Physics Group and tutoring physics at S ...
of the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, who contributed 24 articles on
particle physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...
.
While ''Britannica'' authors have included writers such as
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
,
Marie Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...
, and
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
,
as well as notable independent encyclopaedists such as
Isaac Asimov
yi, יצחק אזימאװ
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR
, spouse =
, relatives =
, children = 2
, death_date =
, death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
, nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...
, some have been criticized for lack of expertise. In 1911 the historian
George L. Burr wrote:
Staff
![Thomas Spencer Baynes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Thomas_Spencer_Baynes.jpg)
in the fifteenth edition of ''Britannica'',
Dale Hoiberg
Dale Hollis Hoiberg is a sinologist and has been the editor-in-chief of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' since 1997. He holds a PhD degree in Chinese literature and began to work for ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as an index editor in 1978. In 20 ...
, a
sinologist, was listed as ''Britannica's'' Senior Vice President and editor-in-chief.
Among his predecessors as editors-in-chief were
Hugh Chisholm
Hugh Chisholm (; 22 February 1866 – 29 September 1924) was a British journalist, and editor of the 10th, 11th and 12th editions of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Life
He was born in London, a son of Henry Williams Chisholm (1809–1901), ...
(1902–1924),
James Louis Garvin
James Louis Garvin CH (12 April 1868 – 23 January 1947) was a British journalist, editor, and author. In 1908, Garvin agreed to take over the editorship of the Sunday newspaper ''The Observer'', revolutionising Sunday journalism and restori ...
(1926–1932),
Franklin Henry Hooper (1932–1938),
Walter Yust
Walter M. Yust (May 16, 1894 – February 29, 1960) was an American journalist and writer. Yust was the American editor-in-chief of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' from 1938 to 1960. (1938–1960),
Harry Ashmore
Harry Scott Ashmore (July 28, 1916 – January 20, 1998) was an American journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials in 1957 on the school integration conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Early life and career
Ashmore was born in Greenvi ...
(1960–1963),
Warren E. Preece (1964–1968, 1969–1975), Sir
William Haley
Sir William John Haley, KCMG (24 May 1901 – 6 September 1987) was a British newspaper editor and broadcasting administrator.
Biography
Haley grew up on the island of Jersey and attended Victoria College. In 1918 he began to study journa ...
(1968–1969),
Philip W. Goetz (1979–1991),
and
Robert McHenry
Robert Dale McHenry (born April 30, 1945) is an American editor, encyclopedist, philanthropist and writer. McHenry worked from 1967 for Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. or associated companies, becoming editor-in-chief of the ''Encyclopædia Brita ...
(1992–1997).
Anita Wolff was listed as the Deputy Editor and
Theodore Pappas
Theodore D. "Ted" Pappas is executive editor and chief development officer of ''Encyclopædia Britannica.'' He has been with the company since 1998.
He was managing editor of the paleoconservative magazine ''Chronicles (magazine), Chronicles: A Ma ...
as Executive Editor.
Prior Executive Editors include John V. Dodge (1950–1964) and Philip W. Goetz.
Paul T. Armstrong remains the longest working employee of Encyclopædia Britannica. He began his career there in 1934, eventually earning the positions of treasurer, vice president, and chief financial officer in his 58 years with the company, before retiring in 1992.
The 2007 editorial staff of the ''Britannica'' included five Senior Editors and nine Associate Editors, supervised by
Dale Hoiberg
Dale Hollis Hoiberg is a sinologist and has been the editor-in-chief of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' since 1997. He holds a PhD degree in Chinese literature and began to work for ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as an index editor in 1978. In 20 ...
and four others. The editorial staff helped to write the articles of the and some sections of the .
Editorial advisors
The ''Britannica'' has an editorial board of advisors, which includes 12 distinguished scholars:
non-fiction author
Nicholas Carr, religion scholar
Wendy Doniger
Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty (born November 20, 1940) is an American Indologist whose professional career has spanned five decades. A scholar of Sanskrit and Indian textual traditions, her major works include, 'The Hindus: an alternative history'; ' ...
, political economist
Benjamin M. Friedman
Benjamin Morton Friedman (; born 1944) is an American political economist, who is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute's Panel o ...
,
Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus
Leslie H. Gelb, computer scientist
David Gelernter
David Hillel Gelernter (born March 5, 1955) is an American computer scientist, artist, and writer. He is a professor of computer science at Yale University.
Gelernter is known for contributions to parallel computation in the 1980s, and for book ...
, Physics Nobel laureate
Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...
,
Carnegie Corporation of New York President
Vartan Gregorian, philosopher
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...
, cognitive scientist
Donald Norman
Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935) is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially '' The Design ...
, musicologist
Don Michael Randel Don Michael Randel (born December 9, 1940) is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France. He is currently the Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a trustee ...
,
Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, President of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, and cultural anthropologist
Michael Wesch
Michael Lee Wesch (born June 22, 1975) is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Kansas State University. Wesch's work also includes media ecology and the emerging field of digital ethnography, ...
.
The ''
Propædia
The one-volume ''Propædia'' is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', intended as a compendium and topical organization of the 12-volume '' Micropædia'' and the 17-volume '' Macropædia,'' which are organ ...
'' and its ''Outline of Knowledge'' were produced by dozens of editorial advisors under the direction of
Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in N ...
.
Roughly half of these advisors have since died, including some of the Outline's chief architects –
Rene Dubos (d. 1982),
Loren Eiseley
Loren Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was ...
(d. 1977),
Harold D. Lasswell (d. 1978),
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thin ...
(d. 1972),
Peter Ritchie Calder
Peter Ritchie Calder, Baron Ritchie-Calder, (1906 – 1982) was a Scottish socialist writer, journalist and academic.
Early life
Peter Ritchie Calder was born on 1 July 1906 in Forfar, Angus, Scotland.
Career
Calder first worked as a journa ...
(d. 1982) and
Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in N ...
(d. 2001). The also lists just under 4,000 advisors who were consulted for the unsigned articles.
Corporate structure
In January 1996, the ''Britannica'' was purchased from the
Benton Foundation
The Benton Foundation is a nonprofit organization set up by former U.S. Senator William Benton and his wife, Helen Hemingway Benton. Their son, Charles Benton, served as chairman and CEO until his death in 2015.
The Benton Foundation was the own ...
by billionaire Swiss financier
Jacqui Safra
Jacqui (Jacob) Eli Safra (born c. 1940) is a billionaire investor from Geneva. He is a descendant of the Syrian Lebanese- Swiss Jewish Safra banking family.
Biography
Jacqui Eli Safra is the son of Elie Safra (1922–1993) and Yvette Dabbah ( ...
, who serves as its current chair of the board. In 1997, Don Yannias, a long-time associate and investment advisor of Safra, became CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. In 1999, a new company,
Britannica.com Inc., was
created to develop digital versions of the ''Britannica''; Yannias assumed the role of CEO in the new company, while his former position at the parent company remained vacant for two years. Yannias' tenure at Britannica.com Inc. was marked by missteps, considerable lay-offs, and financial losses. In 2001, Yannias was replaced by
Ilan Yeshua Ilan Yeshua is the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Walla! Communications Channels Ltd. (from November 2006 to June 2019), an Israeli web portal, traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
He is a former chief executive officer (CEO) of both Enc ...
, who reunited the leadership of the two companies. Yannias later returned to investment management, but remains on the ''Britannica'' Board of Directors.
In 2003, former management consultant
Jorge Aguilar-Cauz was appointed President of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Cauz is the senior executive and reports directly to the ''Britannica's'' Board of Directors. Cauz has been pursuing alliances with other companies and extending the ''Britannica'' brand to new educational and reference products, continuing the strategy pioneered by former CEO
Elkan Harrison Powell
Elkan Harrison Powell (21 November 1888 – 8 May 1966) was a president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
Powell introduced the policies of continuous revision and of leveraging the ''Britannica's'' fame to market successful spin-off products, su ...
in the mid-1930s.
Under Safra's ownership, the company has experienced financial difficulties and has responded by reducing the price of its products and implementing drastic cost cuts. According to a 2003 report in the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'', the ''Britannica'' management has eliminated employee
401(k) accounts and encouraged the use of free images. These changes have had negative impacts, as freelance contributors have waited up to six months for checks and the ''Britannica'' staff have gone years without pay rises.
In the fall of 2017, Karthik Krishnan was appointed global chief executive officer of the Encyclopædia Britannica Group. Krishnan brought a varied perspective to the role based on several high-level positions in digital media, including RELX (formerly known as Reed Elsevier, and one of the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index) and Rodale, in which he was responsible for "driving business and cultural transformation and accelerating growth".
Taking the reins of the company as it was preparing to mark its 250th anniversary and define the next phase of its digital strategy for consumers and K-12 schools, Krishnan launched a series of new initiatives in his first year.
First was Britannica Insights, a free, downloadable software extension to the Google Chrome browser that served up edited, fact-checked Britannica information with queries on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Its purpose, the company said, was to "provide trusted, verified information" in conjunction with search results that were thought to be increasingly unreliable in the era of misinformation and "fake news."
The product was quickly followed by Britannica School Insights, which provided similar content for subscribers to Britannica's online classroom solutions, and a partnership with YouTube in which verified Britannica content appeared on the site as an antidote to user-generated video content that could be false or misleading.
Krishnan, himself an educator at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
's
Stern School of Business, believes in the "transformative power of education" and set steering the company toward solidifying its place among leaders in educational technology and supplemental curriculum. Krishnan aimed at providing more useful and relevant solutions to customer needs, extending and renewing Britannica's historical emphasis on "Utility", which had been the watchword of its first edition in 1768.
Krishnan also is active in civic affairs, with organizations such as the Urban Enterprise Initiative and Urban Upbound, whose board he serves on.
Competition
As the ''Britannica'' is a general encyclopaedia, it does not seek to compete with specialized encyclopaedias such as the ''
Encyclopaedia of Mathematics
The ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics'' (also ''EOM'' and formerly ''Encyclopaedia of Mathematics'') is a large reference work in mathematics.
Overview
The 2002 version contains more than 8,000 entries covering most areas of mathematics at a graduat ...
'' or the ''
Dictionary of the Middle Ages
The ''Dictionary of the Middle Ages'' is a 13-volume encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the American Council of Learned Societies between 1982 and 1989. It was first conceived and started in 1975 with American medieval historian Jo ...
'', which can devote much more space to their chosen topics. In its first years, the ''Britannica'' main competitor was the general encyclopaedia of
Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers ( – 15 May 1740) was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the '' Cyclopaedia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences''.
Biography
Chambers was born in Milton near Kendal, Westmor ...
and, soon thereafter, ''
Rees's Cyclopædia
Rees's ''Cyclopædia'', in full ''The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature'' was an important 19th-century British encyclopaedia edited by Rev. Abraham Rees (1743–1825), a Presbyterian minister and scholar w ...
'' and
Coleridge's ''
Encyclopædia Metropolitana
''The Encyclopædia Metropolitana'' was an encyclopedic work published in London, from 1817 to 1845, by part publication. In all it came to quarto, 30 vols., having been issued in 59 parts (22,426 pages, 565 plates).
Origins
Initially the proje ...
''. In the 20th century, successful competitors included ''
Collier's Encyclopedia
''Collier's Encyclopedia'' is a discontinued general encyclopedia first published in 1949 by P. F. Collier and Son in the United States. With ''Encyclopedia Americana'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia'' became one of the th ...
'', the ''
Encyclopedia Americana
''Encyclopedia Americana'' is a general encyclopedia written in American English. It was the first major multivolume encyclopedia that was published in the United States. With ''Collier's Encyclopedia'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclo ...
'', and the ''
World Book Encyclopedia
The ''World Book Encyclopedia'' is an American encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects. ''World Book'' wa ...
''. Nevertheless, from the 9th edition onwards, the ''Britannica'' was widely considered to have the greatest authority of any general English-language encyclopaedia,
especially because of its broad coverage and eminent authors.
The print version of the ''Britannica'' was significantly more expensive than its competitors.
Since the early 1990s, the ''Britannica'' has faced new challenges from digital information sources. The Internet, facilitated by the development of
Web search engines
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
, has grown into a common source of information for many people, and provides easy access to reliable original sources and expert opinions, thanks in part to initiatives such as
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
,
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
's
release of its educational materials and the open
PubMed Central
PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center fo ...
library of the
National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...
. In general, the Internet tends to provide more current coverage than print media, due to the ease with which material on the Internet can be updated. In rapidly changing fields such as science, technology, politics, culture and modern history, the ''Britannica'' has struggled to stay up to date, a problem first analysed systematically by its former editor
Walter Yust
Walter M. Yust (May 16, 1894 – February 29, 1960) was an American journalist and writer. Yust was the American editor-in-chief of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' from 1938 to 1960. .
Eventually, the ''Britannica'' turned to focus more on its online edition.
Print encyclopaedias
The has been compared with other print encyclopaedias, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
A well-known comparison is that of
Kenneth Kister Kenneth F. Kister (born November 3, 1935) is an academic, professor of library science and authority in the field of reference and information sources.http://lmri.ucsb.edu/pipermail/reformanet/2004-April/012158.html, available on Internet Archive : ...
, who gave a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the 1993 ''Britannica'' with two comparable encyclopaedias, ''
Collier's Encyclopedia
''Collier's Encyclopedia'' is a discontinued general encyclopedia first published in 1949 by P. F. Collier and Son in the United States. With ''Encyclopedia Americana'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia'' became one of the th ...
'' and the ''
Encyclopedia Americana
''Encyclopedia Americana'' is a general encyclopedia written in American English. It was the first major multivolume encyclopedia that was published in the United States. With ''Collier's Encyclopedia'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclo ...
''.
For the quantitative analysis, ten articles were selected at random—
circumcision
Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis. In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised. Top ...
,
Charles Drew Charles Drew may refer to:
* Charles R. Drew (1904–1950), American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher
* Charles Drew (cricketer) (1888–1960), Australian cricketer
* Charles Drew (surgeon) (1916–1987), cardiothoracic surgeon
* Charles ...
,
Galileo,
Philip Glass,
heart disease,
IQ,
panda bear
The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes ...
,
sexual harassment,
Shroud of Turin and
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...
—and letter grades of A–D or F were awarded in four categories: coverage, accuracy, clarity, and recency. In all four categories and for all three encyclopaedias, the four average grades fell between
B− and B+, chiefly because none of the encyclopaedias had an article on sexual harassment in 1994. In the accuracy category, the ''Britannica'' received one "D" and seven "A"s, ''Encyclopedia Americana'' received eight "A"s, and ''Collier's'' received one "D" and seven "A"s; thus, ''Britannica'' received an average score of 92% for accuracy to ''Americana''s 95% and ''Collier's'' 92%. In the timeliness category, ''Britannica'' averaged an 86% to ''Americanas 90% and ''Collier's'' 85%.
In 2013, the President of Encyclopædia Britannica announced that after 244 years, the encyclopedia would cease print production and all future editions would be entirely digital.
Digital encyclopaedias on optical media
The most notable competitor of the ''Britannica'' among CD/DVD-ROM digital encyclopaedias was ''
Encarta
''Microsoft Encarta'' is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription, although later article ...
'',
now discontinued, a modern, multimedia encyclopaedia that incorporated three print encyclopaedias: ''
Funk & Wagnalls'', ''
Collier's'' and the ''New Merit Scholar's Encyclopedia''. ''Encarta'' was the top-selling multimedia encyclopaedia, based on total US retail sales from January 2000 to February 2006. Both occupied the same price range, with the ''
2007 Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate'' CD or DVD costing US$40–50
and the Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007 DVD costing US$45.
The ''Britannica'' contains 100,000 articles and ''
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus'' (US only), and offers Primary and Secondary School editions.
''Encarta'' contained 66,000 articles, a user-friendly Visual Browser, interactive maps, math, language and homework tools, a US and UK dictionary, and a youth edition.
Like ''Encarta'', the ''Britannica'' has been criticized for being biased towards United States audiences; the United Kingdom-related articles are updated less often, maps of the United States are more detailed than those of other countries, and it lacks a UK dictionary.
Like the ''Britannica'', ''Encarta'' was available online by subscription, although some content could be accessed free.
Wikipedia
The main online alternative to ''Britannica'' is
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
.
The key differences between the two lie in accessibility; the model of participation they bring to an
encyclopedic project; their respective style sheets and editorial policies; relative ages; the number of subjects treated; the number of languages in which articles are written and made available; and their underlying economic models: unlike ''Britannica'', Wikipedia is a not-for-profit and is not connected with traditional profit- and contract-based publishing distribution networks.
The 699 printed articles are generally written by identified contributors, and the roughly 65,000 printed articles are the work of the editorial staff and identified outside consultants. Thus, a ''Britannica'' article either has known authorship or a set of possible authors (the editorial staff). With the exception of the editorial staff, most of the ''Britannica'' contributors are experts in their field—some are Nobel laureates.
By contrast, the articles of Wikipedia are written by people of unknown degrees of expertise: most do not claim any particular expertise, and of those who do, many are anonymous and have no verifiable credentials.
It is for this lack of institutional vetting, or certification, that former ''Britannica'' editor-in-chief Robert McHenry notes his belief that Wikipedia cannot hope to rival the ''Britannica'' in accuracy.
In 2005, the journal ''Nature'' chose articles from both websites in a wide range of science topics and sent them to what it called "relevant" field experts for peer review. The experts then compared the competing articles—one from each site on a given topic—side by side but were not told which article came from which site. ''Nature'' got back 42 usable reviews.
In the end, the journal found just eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts: four from each site. It also discovered many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 in Wikipedia and 123 in ''Britannica'', an average of 3.86 mistakes per article for Wikipedia and 2.92 for ''Britannica''.
Although ''Britannica ''was revealed as the more accurate encyclopedia, with fewer errors,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a British-American company known for publishing the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia, as well as extensive digital efforts—including text and audiovisual ...
in its rebuttal called ''Natures study flawed and misleading
and called for a "prompt" retraction. It noted that two of the articles in the study were taken from a ''Britannica'' yearbook and not the encyclopaedia, and another two were from ''Compton's Encyclopedia'' (called the ''Britannica Student Encyclopedia'' on the company's website).
''Nature'' defended its story and declined to retract, stating that, as it was comparing Wikipedia with the web version of ''Britannica'', it used whatever relevant material was available on ''Britannica''s website. Interviewed in February 2009, the managing director of ''Britannica UK'' said: In a January 2016 press release, ''Britannica'' called Wikipedia "an impressive achievement."
Critical and popular assessments
Reputation
![EB1 Plate 003 lark flower](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/EB1_Plate_003_lark_flower.gif)
Since the 3rd edition, the ''Britannica'' has enjoyed a popular and critical reputation for general excellence.
The 3rd and the 9th editions were pirated for sale in the United States,
beginning with ''
Dobson's Encyclopaedia''. On the release of the 14th edition, ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine dubbed the ''Britannica'' the "Patriarch of the Library". In a related advertisement, naturalist
William Beebe
Charles William Beebe ( ; July 29, 1877 – June 4, 1962) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological ...
was quoted as saying that the ''Britannica'' was "beyond comparison because there is no competitor." References to the ''Britannica'' can be found throughout
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
, most notably in one of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite
Sherlock Holmes stories, "
The Red-Headed League
"The Red-Headed League" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It first appeared in ''The Strand Magazine'' in August 1891, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. Conan Doyle ranked "The Red-Headed Leag ...
". The tale was highlighted by the
Lord Mayor of London
The Lord Mayor of London is the mayor of the City of London and the leader of the City of London Corporation. Within the City, the Lord Mayor is accorded precedence over all individuals except the sovereign and retains various traditional powe ...
, Gilbert Inglefield, at the
bicentennial of the ''Britannica''.
The ''Britannica'' has a reputation for summarising knowledge.
To further their education, some people have devoted themselves to reading the entire ''Britannica'', taking anywhere from three to 22 years to do so.
When
Fat'h Ali became the
Shah of Persia in 1797, he was given a set of the ''Britannica's'' 3rd edition, which he read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the ".
Writer
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
claimed to have read the complete 9th edition—except for the science articles
—and
Richard Evelyn Byrd
Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer and explorer. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, p ...
took the ''Britannica'' as reading material for his five-month stay at the
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...
in 1934, while
Philip Beaver read it during a sailing expedition. More recently,
A.J. Jacobs, an editor at ''
Esquire'' magazine, read the entire 2002 version of the 15th edition, describing his experiences in the well-received 2004 book, ''
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World''. Only two people are known to have read two independent editions: the author
C. S. Forester and
Amos Urban Shirk, an American businessman who read the 11th and 14th editions, devoting roughly three hours per night for four and a half years to read the 11th.
Awards
The CD/DVD-ROM version of the ''Britannica'', ''
Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite
''Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite'' is an encyclopaedia based on the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. It was published between 2003 and 2015.
Product description
The DVD contain ...
'', received the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award from the
Association of Educational Publishers
The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) was a U.S. non-profit organization for educational publishers. It was active in public awareness campaigns on effective educational resources, as well as aiding communication between educational o ...
. On 15 July 2009, was awarded a spot as one of "Top Ten Superbrands in the UK" by a panel of more than 2,000 independent reviewers, as reported by the BBC.
Coverage of topics
Topics are chosen in part by reference to the "Outline of Knowledge".
The bulk of the ''Britannica'' is devoted to geography (26% of the ), biography (14%), biology and medicine (11%), literature (7%), physics and astronomy (6%), religion (5%), art (4%), Western philosophy (4%), and law (3%).
A complementary study of the found that geography accounted for 25% of articles, science 18%, social sciences 17%, biography 17%, and all other humanities 25%.
Writing in 1992, one reviewer judged that the "range, depth, and
catholicity
Catholicity (from , via ) is a concept pertaining to beliefs and practices that are widely accepted by numerous Christian denominations, most notably by those Christian denominations that describe themselves as ''catholic'' in accordance with th ...
of coverage
f the ''Britannica''are unsurpassed by any other general Encyclopaedia."
The ''Britannica'' does not cover topics in equivalent detail; for example, the whole of
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
and most other religions is covered in a single article, whereas 14 articles are devoted to Christianity, comprising nearly half of all religion articles.
However, the ''Britannica'' has been lauded as the ''least'' biased of general Encyclopaedias marketed to Western readers
and praised for its biographies of important women of all eras.
Criticism of editorial decisions
On rare occasions, the ''Britannica'' has been criticized for its editorial choices. Given its roughly constant size, the encyclopaedia has needed to reduce or eliminate some topics to accommodate others, resulting in controversial decisions. The initial 15th edition (1974–1985) was faulted for having reduced or eliminated coverage of children's literature,
military decorations, and the French poet
Joachim du Bellay
Joachim du Bellay (; – 1 January 1560) was a French poet, critic, and a founder of the Pléiade. He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: '' Défense et illustration de la langue française'', which aimed at promoting French as an a ...
; editorial mistakes were also alleged, such as inconsistent sorting of Japanese biographies.
Its elimination of the index was condemned, as was the apparently arbitrary division of articles into the and .
Summing up, one critic called the initial 15th edition a "qualified failure...
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
cares more for juggling its format than for preserving."
More recently, reviewers from the
American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...
were surprised to find that most educational articles had been eliminated from the 1992 , along with the article on
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
.
Some very few ''Britannica''-appointed contributors are mistaken. A notorious instance from the ''Britannica's'' early years is the rejection of
Newtonian gravity
Newton's law of universal gravitation is usually stated as that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distan ...
by
George Gleig
George Gleig FRSE FSA LLD (12 May 1753 – 9 March 1840) was a Scottish minister who transferred to the Episcopalian faith and became Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Life
He was born at Boghall Farm, near Arbuthnott in Aberdeenshire, ...
, the chief editor of the 3rd edition (1788–1797), who wrote that gravity was caused by the
classical element of fire.
The ''Britannica'' has also staunchly defended a scientific approach to cultural topics, as it did with
William Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith (8 November 184631 March 1894) was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and contributo ...
's articles on religion in the 9th edition, particularly his article stating that the Bible was not historically accurate (1875).
Other criticisms
The ''Britannica'' has received criticism, especially as editions become outdated. It is expensive to produce a completely new edition of the ''Britannica'', and its editors delay for as long as fiscally sensible (usually about 25 years).
For example, despite continuous revision, the 14th edition became outdated after 35 years (1929–1964). When American physicist
Harvey Einbinder detailed its failings in his 1964 book, ''The Myth of the Britannica'', the encyclopaedia was provoked to produce the 15th edition, which required 10 years of work.
It is still difficult to keep the ''Britannica'' current; one recent critic writes, "it is not difficult to find articles that are out-of-date or in need of revision", noting that the longer articles are more likely to be outdated than the shorter articles.
Information in the is sometimes inconsistent with the corresponding article(s), mainly because of the failure to update one or the other.
The bibliographies of the articles have been criticized for being more out-of-date than the articles themselves.
In 2005, 12-year-old
schoolboy Lucian George found several inaccuracies in the ''Britannica''s entries on
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
and
wildlife
Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...
in
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...
.
In 2010, an inaccurate entry about the
Irish Civil War was discussed in the Irish press following a decision of the
Department of Education and Science
An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...
to pay for online access.
Writing about the 3rd edition (1788–1797), ''Britannica''s chief editor
George Gleig
George Gleig FRSE FSA LLD (12 May 1753 – 9 March 1840) was a Scottish minister who transferred to the Episcopalian faith and became Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Life
He was born at Boghall Farm, near Arbuthnott in Aberdeenshire, ...
observed that "perfection seems to be incompatible with the nature of works constructed on such a plan, and embracing such a variety of subjects." In March 2006, the ''Britannica'' wrote, "we in no way mean to imply that ''Britannica'' is error-free; we have never made such a claim"
(although in 1962 Britannica's sales department famously said of the 14th edition "It is truth. It is unquestionable fact.") The sentiment is expressed by its original editor,
William Smellie:
However,
Jorge Cauz (president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.) asserted in 2012 that "''Britannica''
..will always be factually correct."
History
Past owners have included, in chronological order, the Edinburgh, Scotland printers
Colin Macfarquhar
Colin Macfarquhar (1744 or 1745? – 2 April 1793 or May 1793, Edinburgh?, Scotland) was a Scottish bookseller and printer who is most known for co-founding ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' with Andrew Bell, first published in December 1768. The da ...
and
Andrew Bell, Scottish bookseller
Archibald Constable
Archibald David Constable (24 February 1774 – 21 July 1827) was a Scottish publisher, bookseller and stationer.
Life
Constable was born at Carnbee, Fife, son of the land steward to the Earl of Kellie.
In 1788 Archibald was apprenticed to P ...
, Scottish publisher
A & C Black,
Horace Everett Hooper
Horace Everett Hooper (December 8, 1859 – June 13, 1922) was the publisher of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' from 1897 until his death.
Early life
Born at Worcester, Massachusetts, he left school at the age of 16, and after gaining experience i ...
,
Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...
Roebuck and
William Benton.
The present owner of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. is
Jacqui Safra
Jacqui (Jacob) Eli Safra (born c. 1940) is a billionaire investor from Geneva. He is a descendant of the Syrian Lebanese- Swiss Jewish Safra banking family.
Biography
Jacqui Eli Safra is the son of Elie Safra (1922–1993) and Yvette Dabbah ( ...
, a Brazilian billionaire and actor. Recent advances in information technology and the rise of electronic encyclopaedias such as
Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite
''Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite'' is an encyclopaedia based on the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. It was published between 2003 and 2015.
Product description
The DVD contain ...
, ''
Encarta
''Microsoft Encarta'' is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription, although later article ...
'' and Wikipedia have reduced the demand for print encyclopaedias.
To remain competitive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has stressed the reputation of the ''Britannica'', reduced its price and production costs, and developed electronic versions on
CD-ROM, DVD, and the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. Since the early 1930s, the company has promoted spin-off reference works.
[ Aside from providing an excellent summary of the ''Britannica's'' history and early spin-off products, this article also describes the life-cycle of a typical ''Britannica'' edition. A new edition typically begins with strong sales that decay as the encyclopaedia becomes outdated. When work on a new edition is begun, sales of the old edition stop, just when fiscal needs are greatest: a new editorial staff must be assembled, articles commissioned. ]Elkan Harrison Powell
Elkan Harrison Powell (21 November 1888 – 8 May 1966) was a president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
Powell introduced the policies of continuous revision and of leveraging the ''Britannica's'' fame to market successful spin-off products, su ...
identified this fluctuation of income as a danger to any encyclopaedia, one he hoped to overcome with continuous revision.
Editions
The ''Britannica'' has been issued in 15 editions, with multi-volume supplements to the 3rd and 4th editions (see the
Table
Table may refer to:
* Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs
* Table (landform), a flat area of land
* Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns
* Table (database), how the table data ...
below). The 5th and 6th editions were reprints of the 4th, and the 10th edition was only a supplement to the 9th, just as the 12th and 13th editions were supplements to the 11th. The 15th underwent massive reorganization in 1985, but the updated, current version is still known as the 15th. The 14th and 15th editions were edited every year throughout their runs, so that later printings of each were entirely different from early ones.
Throughout history, the ''Britannica'' has had two aims: to be an excellent reference book, and to provide educational material.
In 1974, the 15th edition adopted a third goal: to systematize all human knowledge.
The history of the ''Britannica'' can be divided into five eras, punctuated by changes in management, or reorganization of the dictionary.
1768–1826
![Rosetta Stone](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Rosetta_stone.jpg)
In the first era (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the ''Britannica'' was managed and published by its founders,
Colin Macfarquhar
Colin Macfarquhar (1744 or 1745? – 2 April 1793 or May 1793, Edinburgh?, Scotland) was a Scottish bookseller and printer who is most known for co-founding ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' with Andrew Bell, first published in December 1768. The da ...
and
Andrew Bell, by
Archibald Constable
Archibald David Constable (24 February 1774 – 21 July 1827) was a Scottish publisher, bookseller and stationer.
Life
Constable was born at Carnbee, Fife, son of the land steward to the Earl of Kellie.
In 1788 Archibald was apprenticed to P ...
, and by others. The ''Britannica'' was first published between December 1768 and 1771 in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
as the ''Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon a New Plan''. In part, it was conceived in reaction to the French ''
Encyclopédie
''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers'' (English: ''Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts''), better known as ''Encyclopédie'', was a general encyclopedia publis ...
'' of
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the '' Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a promi ...
and
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (; ; 16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was, together with Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the '' Encyclopéd ...
(published 1751–72), which had been inspired by
Chambers's ''Cyclopaedia'' (first edition 1728). It went on sale 10 December.
The ''Britannica'' of this period was primarily a Scottish enterprise, and it is one of the most enduring legacies of the
Scottish Enlightenment. In this era, the ''Britannica'' moved from being a three-volume set (1st edition) compiled by one young editor—
William Smellie—to a 20-volume set written by numerous authorities.
[ Several other encyclopaedias competed throughout this period, among them editions of ]Abraham Rees
Abraham Rees (1743 – 9 June 1825) was a Welsh nonconformist minister, and compiler of ''Rees's Cyclopædia'' (in 45 volumes).
Life
He was the second son of Esther, daughter of Abraham Penry, and her husband Lewis Rees, and was born in ...
's ''Cyclopædia'' and Coleridge's ''Encyclopædia Metropolitana
''The Encyclopædia Metropolitana'' was an encyclopedic work published in London, from 1817 to 1845, by part publication. In all it came to quarto, 30 vols., having been issued in 59 parts (22,426 pages, 565 plates).
Origins
Initially the proje ...
'' and David Brewster's ''Edinburgh Encyclopædia
The ''Edinburgh Encyclopædia'' is an encyclopaedia in 18 volumes, printed and published by William Blackwood and edited by David Brewster between 1808 and 1830. In competition with the Edinburgh-published ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the ''Edin ...
''.
1827–1901
During the second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the ''Britannica'' was managed by the Edinburgh publishing firm A & C Black. Although some contributors were again recruited through friendships of the chief editors, notably Macvey Napier
Macvey Napier (born Napier Macvey) (11 April 1776 – 11 February 1847) was a Scottish solicitor, legal scholar, and an editor of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. He was Professor of Conveyancing at the University of Edinburgh.
Life
Macv ...
, others were attracted by the ''Britannica's'' reputation. The contributors often came from other countries and included the world's most respected authorities in their fields. A general index of all articles was included for the first time in the 7th edition, a practice maintained until 1974.
Production of the 9th edition was overseen by Thomas Spencer Baynes
Thomas Spencer Baynes (24 March 1823 – 31 May 1887) was an English philosopher.
Life
Baynes was born in Wellington, Somerset to a Baptist minister. He intended to study for Baptist ministry, and was at a theological seminary at Bath with that ...
, the first English-born editor-in-chief. Dubbed the "Scholar's Edition", the 9th edition is the most scholarly of all ''Britannicas''. After 1880, Baynes was assisted by William Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith (8 November 184631 March 1894) was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and contributo ...
. No biographies of living persons were included. James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...
and Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The stor ...
were special advisors on science. However, by the close of the 19th century, the 9th edition was outdated, and the ''Britannica'' faced financial difficulties.
1901–1973
In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–1973), the ''Britannica'' was managed by American businessmen who introduced direct marketing
Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as ''direct response marketing''. By ...
and door-to-door
Door-to-door is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, evangelism or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a pro ...
sales. The American owners gradually simplified articles, making them less scholarly for a mass market. The 10th edition was an eleven-volume supplement (including one each of maps and an index) to the 9th, numbered as volumes 25–35, but the 11th edition was a completely new work, and is still praised for excellence; its owner, Horace Hooper, lavished enormous effort on its perfection.
When Hooper fell into financial difficulties, the ''Britannica'' was managed by Sears Roebuck
Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...
for 18 years (1920–1923, 1928–1943). In 1932, the vice-president of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell
Elkan Harrison Powell (21 November 1888 – 8 May 1966) was a president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
Powell introduced the policies of continuous revision and of leveraging the ''Britannica's'' fame to market successful spin-off products, su ...
, assumed presidency of the ''Britannica''; in 1936, he began the policy of continuous revision. This was a departure from earlier practice, in which the articles were not changed until a new edition was produced, at roughly 25-year intervals, some articles unchanged from earlier editions. Powell developed new educational products that built upon the ''Britannica''s reputation.
In 1943, Sears donated the to the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. William Benton, then a vice president of the university, provided the working capital for its operation. The stock was divided between Benton and the university, with the university holding an option on the stock. Benton became chairman of the board and managed the ''Britannica'' until his death in 1973. Benton set up the Benton Foundation
The Benton Foundation is a nonprofit organization set up by former U.S. Senator William Benton and his wife, Helen Hemingway Benton. Their son, Charles Benton, served as chairman and CEO until his death in 2015.
The Benton Foundation was the own ...
, which managed the ''Britannica'' until 1996, and whose sole beneficiary was the University of Chicago. In 1968, near the end of this era, the ''Britannica'' celebrated its bicentennial.
1974–1994
In the fourth era (1974–94), the ''Britannica'' introduced its 15th edition, which was reorganized into three parts: the , the , and the . Under Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in N ...
(member of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and its chair from 1974; director of editorial planning for the 15th edition of ''Britannica'' from 1965), the ''Britannica'' sought not only to be a good reference work and educational tool, but to systematize all human knowledge. The absence of a separate index and the grouping of articles into parallel encyclopaedias (the and ) provoked a "firestorm of criticism" of the initial 15th edition.[
*
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* ] In response, the 15th edition was completely reorganized and indexed for a re-release in 1985. This second version of the 15th edition continued to be published and revised until the 2010 print version. The official title of the 15th edition is the ''New Encyclopædia Britannica'', although it has also been promoted as ''Britannica 3''.
On 9 March 1976 the US Federal Trade Commission entered an opinion and order enjoining Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. from using: a) deceptive advertising practices in recruiting sales agents and obtaining sales leads, and b) deceptive sales practices in the door-to-door presentations of its sales agents.
1994–present
In the fifth era (1994–present), digital versions have been developed and released on optical media
In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data ( bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces ...
and online. In 1996, the ''Britannica'' was bought by Jacqui Safra
Jacqui (Jacob) Eli Safra (born c. 1940) is a billionaire investor from Geneva. He is a descendant of the Syrian Lebanese- Swiss Jewish Safra banking family.
Biography
Jacqui Eli Safra is the son of Elie Safra (1922–1993) and Yvette Dabbah ( ...
at well below its estimated value, owing to the company's financial difficulties. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a British-American company known for publishing the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia, as well as extensive digital efforts—including text and audiovisual ...
split in 1999. One part retained the company name and developed the print version, and the other, Britannica.com Inc., developed digital versions. Since 2001, the two companies have shared a CEO, Ilan Yeshua Ilan Yeshua is the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Walla! Communications Channels Ltd. (from November 2006 to June 2019), an Israeli web portal, traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
He is a former chief executive officer (CEO) of both Enc ...
, who has continued Powell's strategy of introducing new products with the ''Britannica'' name. In March 2012, Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz, announced that it would not produce any new print editions of the encyclopaedia, with the 2010 15th edition being the last. The company will focus only on the online edition and other educational tools.
''Britannica''s final print edition was in 2010, a 32-volume set. ''Britannica Global Edition'' was also printed in 2010, containing 30 volumes and 18,251 pages, with 8,500 photographs, maps, flags, and illustrations in smaller "compact" volumes, as well as over 40,000 articles written by scholars from across the world, including Nobel Prize winners. Unlike the 15th edition, it did not contain and sections, but ran A through Z as all editions up through the 14th had. The following is ''Britannica''s description of the work:
In 2020, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. released the ''Britannica All New Children's Encyclopedia: What We Know and What We Don't'', an encyclopedia aimed primarily at younger readers, covering major topics. The encyclopedia was widely praised for bringing back the print format. It was ''Britannica'''s first encyclopedia for children since 1984.
Dedications
The ''Britannica'' was dedicated to the reigning British monarch from 1788 to 1901 and then, upon its sale to an American partnership, to the British monarch and the President of the United States. Thus, the 11th edition is "dedicated by Permission to His Majesty George the Fifth, King of Great Britain and Ireland
The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Bailiw ...
and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India
Emperor or Empress of India was a title used by British monarchs from 1 May 1876 (with the Royal Titles Act 1876) to 22 June 1948, that was used to signify their rule over British India, as its imperial head of state. Royal Proclamation of 22 ...
, and to William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pr ...
, President of the United States of America." The order of the dedications has changed with the relative power of the United States and Britain, and with relative sales; the 1954 version of the 14th edition is "Dedicated by Permission to the Heads of the Two English-Speaking Peoples, Dwight David Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
, President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second." Consistent with this tradition, the 2007 version of the current 15th edition was "dedicated by permission to the current President of the United States of America, George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II", while the 2010 version of the current 15th edition is "dedicated by permission to Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
, President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II."[''The New Encyclopædia Britannica'', ''Propædia: Outline of Knowledge and Guide to the Britannica'', 15th edition, 2010.]
Edition summary
See also
* Encyclopædia Britannica Films
Encyclopædia Britannica Films (also named EB Films for short) was the top producer and distributor of educational 16 mm films and later VHS videocassettes for schools and libraries from the 1940s through the 1990s (by which time the internet ...
* ''Great Books of the Western World
''Great Books of the Western World'' is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in a 54-volume set.
The original editors had three criteria for includi ...
''
* List of encyclopedias by branch of knowledge
This is a list of notable encyclopedias sorted by branch of knowledge. For the purposes of this list, an encyclopedia is defined as a "compendium that contains information on either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." F ...
* List of encyclopedias by date
This is a list of encyclopedias, arranged by time period. For other arrangements, see Lists of encyclopedias.
Encyclopedias before 1700
* ''Nine Books of Disciplines'' by Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BC-27 BC)
* ''Naturalis Historia'' by Pliny the ...
*
* List of online encyclopedias
Notes
References
Further reading
* Boyles, Denis. (2016) ''Everything Explained That Is Explainable: On the Creation of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''s Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911'' (2016
online review
*
* Greenstein, Shane, and Michelle Devereux (2006).
The Crisis at Encyclopædia Britannica
case history, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
.
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* Lee, Timothy. ''Techdirt Interviews Britannica President Jorge Cauz'', Techdirt.com, 2 June 2008
External links
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''Encyclopaedia Britannica''
at the National Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland (NLS) ( gd, Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba, sco, Naitional Leebrar o Scotland) is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. As one of the largest libraries in the ...
, first ten editions (and supplements) in PDF format.
''Encyclopaedia Britannica''
at the Online Books Page
The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet. It is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The Online Books Page lists over 2 million books and has several fea ...
, currently including the 1st-13th editions in multiple formats.
* 3rd edition, (1797, first volume, use search facility for others) at Bavarian State Librar
MDZ-Reader , Band , Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a dictionary of arts, sciences, and miscellaneous literature , Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a dictionary of arts, sciences, and miscellaneous literature
* 7th edition (1842)
fulltext
via Hathi Trust
* 8th edition (1860, index volume, use search facility for others) at Bavarian State Librar
* Scribner's 9th Edition (1878) ttps://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3A%28britannica%29%20AND%20publisher%3A%28scribner%27s%29 archive.org* 9th and 10th (1902) edition
1902Encyclopedia.com
{{Authority control
1768 books
1768 establishments in Scotland
American encyclopedias
English-language encyclopedias
History of Edinburgh
Publications established in 1768
Scottish Enlightenment
Scottish encyclopedias
American online encyclopedias
British online encyclopedias