![1913FebBrittanica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/1913FebBrittanica.jpg)
The ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' has been published continuously since 1768, appearing in fifteen official editions. Several editions have been amended with multi-volume "supplements" (3rd, 5th/6th), consisted of previous editions with added supplements (10th, and 12th/13th) or gone drastic re-organizations (15th). In recent years, digital versions of the ''Britannica'' have been developed, both online and 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 ...
. Since the early 1930s, the ''Britannica'' has developed several "spin-off" products to leverage its reputation as a reliable reference work and educational tool.
The Encyclopedia as known up to 2012 was incurring unsustainable losses and the print editions were ended, but it continues on the Internet.
Historical context
Encyclopedias of various types had been published since antiquity, beginning with the collected works of
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...
and the ''
Natural History'' of
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...
, the latter having 2493 articles in 37 books. Encyclopedias were published in Europe and China throughout the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, such as the ''
Satyricon
The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petr ...
'' of
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (early 5th century), the ''Speculum majus'' (''Great Mirror'') of
Vincent of Beauvais
Vincent of Beauvais ( la, Vincentius Bellovacensis or ''Vincentius Burgundus''; c. 1264) was a Dominican friar at the Cistercian monastery of Royaumont Abbey, France. He is known mostly for his ''Speculum Maius'' (''Great mirror''), a major work ...
(1250), and ''Encyclopedia septem tomis distincta'' (''A Seven-Part Encyclopedia'') by
Johann Heinrich Alsted
Johann Heinrich Alsted (March 1588 – November 9, 1638), "the true parent of all the Encyclopædias", s:Budget of Paradoxes/O. was a German-born Transylvanian Saxon Calvinist minister and academic, known for his varied interests: in Ramism and ...
(1630). Most early encyclopedias did not include biographies of living people and were written in
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 ...
, although some encyclopedias were translated into English, such as ''De proprietatibus rerum (On the properties of things)'' (1240) by
Bartholomeus Anglicus Bartholomaeus Anglicus (before 1203–1272), also known as Bartholomew the Englishman and Berthelet, was an early 13th-century Scholastic of Paris, a member of the Franciscan order. He was the author of the compendium ''De proprietatibus rerum' ...
. However, English-composed encyclopedias appeared in the 18th century, beginning with
''Lexicon technicum, or A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences'' by
John Harris (two volumes, published 1704 and 1710, respectively), which contained articles by such contributors as
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...
.
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 ...
wrote a very popular two-volume ''
Cyclopedia'' in 1728, which went through multiple editions and awakened publishers to the enormous profit potential of encyclopedias. Although not all encyclopedias succeeded commercially, their elements sometimes inspired future encyclopedias; for example, the failed two-volume ''A Universal History of Arts and Sciences'' of
Dennis de Coetlogon (published 1745) grouped its topics into long self-contained treatises, an organization that likely inspired the "new plan" of the ''Britannica''. The first encyclopedia to include biographies of living people was the 64-volume ''
Grosses Universal-Lexicon'' (published 1732–1759) of
Johann Heinrich Zedler
Johann Heinrich Zedler (7 January 1706 in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) – 21 March 1751 in Leipzig) was a bookseller and publisher. His most important achievement was the creation of a German encyclopedia, the '' Grosses Universal-Lexicon (Gre ...
, who argued that death alone should not render people notable.
Earliest editions (1st–6th, 1768–1824)
First edition, 1771
![Britannica 1st ed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Britannica_1st_ed._page.jpg)
The ''Britannica'' was the idea of
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 ...
, a bookseller and printer, and
Andrew Bell, an engraver, both of
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
. They conceived of the ''Britannica'' as a conservative 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 ...
(published 1751–1766), which was widely viewed as heretical. Ironically, the ''Encyclopédie'' had begun as a French translation of the popular English encyclopedia, ''
Cyclopaedia'' published by
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 ...
in 1728. Although later editions of Chambers' ''Cyclopaedia'' were still popular, and despite the commercial failure of other English encyclopedias, Macfarquhar and Bell were inspired by the intellectual ferment of the
Scottish Enlightenment and thought the time ripe for a new encyclopedia "compiled upon a new plan".
Needing an editor, the two chose a 28-year-old scholar named
William Smellie who was offered 200
pounds sterling
Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £) is the main unit of sterling, and ...
to produce the encyclopedia in 100 parts (called "numbers" and equivalent to thick pamphlets), which were later bound into three volumes. The first number appeared on 10 December 1768 in Edinburgh, priced
sixpence or 8
pence on finer paper.
The ''Britannica'' was published under the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
"A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", possibly referring to the many gentlemen who had bought subscriptions.
By releasing the numbers in weekly instalments, the ''Britannica'' was completed in 1771, having 2,391 pages. The numbers were bound in three equally sized volumes covering A–B, C–L, and M–Z; an estimated 3,000 sets were eventually sold, priced at 12 pounds sterling apiece.
The 1st edition also featured 160 copperplate illustrations engraved by Bell. Three of the engravings in the section on midwifery, depicting childbirth in clinical detail, were sufficiently shocking to prompt some readers to tear those engravings out of the volume.
The key idea that set the ''Britannica'' apart was to group related topics together into longer essays, that were then organized alphabetically. Previous English encyclopedias had generally listed related terms separately in their alphabetical order, rather like a modern technical dictionary, an approach that the ''Britannica's management derided as "dismembering the sciences".
Although anticipated by
Dennis de Coetlogon, the idea for this "new plan" is generally ascribed to
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 ...
, although
William Smellie claimed it as his own invention.
Smellie wrote most of the first edition, borrowing liberally from the authors of his era, including
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
,
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
,
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
and
Samuel Johnson. He later said:
The vivid prose and easy navigation of the first edition led to strong demand for a second. Although this edition has been faulted for its imperfect scholarship, Smellie argued that the ''Britannica'' should be given the benefit of the doubt:
Smellie strove to make ''Britannica'' as usable as possible, saying that "utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind".
The first edition was reprinted in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, with slight variants on the title page and a different preface, by Edward and Charles Dilly in 1773 and by John Donaldson in 1775.
On the occasion of the
200th anniversary of the 1st edition,
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. published a facsimile of the 1st edition, even including "age spots" on the paper. This has been periodically reprinted and is still part of Britannica's product line.
Second edition, 1783, Supplement 1784
![2ndBritannica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/2ndBritannica.jpg)
After the success of the first edition, a more ambitious
second edition was begun in 1776, with the addition of history and biography articles.
Smellie declined to be editor, principally because he objected to the addition of biography. Macfarquhar took over the role himself, aided by pharmacist
James Tytler, M.A., who was known as an able writer and willing to work for a very low wage.
Macfarquhar and Bell rescued Tytler from the debtors' sanctuary at Holyrood Palace, and employed him for seven years at 17 shillings per week. Tytler wrote many science and history articles and almost all of the minor articles; by
Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
' estimate, Tytler wrote over three-quarters of the second edition.
Compared to the 1st edition, the second had five times as many long articles (150), including "Scotland" (84 pages), "Optics" (132 pages), and "Medicine" (309 pages), which had their own indices. The second edition was published in 181 numbers from 21 June 1777 to 18 September 1784; these numbers were bound into ten volumes dated 1778–1783, having 8,595 pages and 340 plates again engraved by
Andrew Bell.
A
pagination
Pagination, also known as paging, is the process of dividing a document into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages.
In reference to books produced without a computer, pagination can mean the consecutive page numbering to ind ...
error caused page 8000 to follow page 7099. Most of the maps of this edition (eighteen of them) are found in a single 195-page article, "
Geography
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...
".
The second edition improved greatly upon the 1st, but is still notable for the large amount of now-archaic information it contained. For example, "Chemistry" goes into great detail on an obsolete system of what would now be called alchemy, in which earth, air, water and fire are named elements containing various amounts of
phlogiston
The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burni ...
. Tytler also describes the architecture of
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark ( he, תיבת נח; Biblical Hebrew: ''Tevat Noaḥ'')The word "ark" in modern English comes from Old English ''aerca'', meaning a chest or box. (See Cresswell 2010, p.22) The Hebrew word for the vessel, ''teva'', occurs twice in ...
in detail (illustrated with a copperplate engraving). The 2nd edition also reports a cure for
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
:
and a somewhat melancholy article on "
Love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love o ...
" that persisted in the ''Britannica'' for nearly a century (until its 9th edition):
Like the first edition, the second was sold in sections by subscription at the printing shop of
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 ...
. When finished in 1784, complete sets were sold at Charles Elliot's book shop in Edinburgh for 10 pounds, unbound. Over 1,500 copies of the second edition were sold this way by Elliot in less than one year, making the second edition enough of a financial success that a more ambitious third edition was begun a few years later.
The long period of time during which this edition was written makes the later volumes more updated than the earlier ones. Volume 10, published in 1783 after the
Revolutionary War was over, gives in the entry for Virginia: "Virginia, late one of the British colonies, now one of the United States of North America..." but the entry in Volume 2 for Boston, published in 1778, states, "Boston, the capital of New England in North America, ....The following is a description of this capital before the commencement of the present American war."
The causes of the
Revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
are outlined concisely by Tytler in the article "Colonies" thus:
A 204-page appendix, written in 1784, is found at the end of Vol. 10. It does not have its own title page, but merely follows with pagination continuing from 8996 to 9200. The appendix introduces articles on Entomology, Ichthyology, Weather, Hindus (spelled Gentoos), and others, and contains many new biographies, including one of Captain James Cook. It curiously contains 25 new pages on Air, which give very little new information about air itself, but mainly cover hot air ballooning, one of Tytler's hobbies. The first page of the supplement begins with the words "Appendix containing articles omitted and others further explained or improved, together with corrections of errors and of wrong references." The appendix also includes 10 plates, namely CCCXIV to CCCXXIII.
Third edition, 1797
![3rdBritannica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/3rdBritannica.JPG)
The third edition was published from 1788 to 1797 in 300 weekly numbers (1 shilling apiece); these numbers were collected and sold unbound in 30 parts (10 shilling, sixpence each), and finally in 1797 they were bound in 18 volumes with 14,579 pages and 542 plates, and given title pages dated 1797 for all volumes.
Macfarquhar again edited this edition up to "Mysteries" but died in 1793 (aged 48) of "mental exhaustion"; his work was taken over 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, ...
, later Bishop Gleig of Brechin (consecrated 30 October 1808).
James Tytler again contributed heavily to the authorship, up to the letter M.
Andrew Bell, Macfarquhar's partner, bought the rights to the ''Britannica'' from Macfarquhar's heirs.
Nearly doubling the scope of the 2nd edition, Macfarquhar's encyclopedic vision was finally realized. Recruited by Gleig, several illustrious authorities contributed to this edition, such as Dr.
Thomas Thomson Thomas Thomson may refer to:
* Tom Thomson (1877–1917), Canadian painter
* Thomas Thomson (apothecary) (died 1572), Scottish apothecary
* Thomas Thomson (advocate) (1768–1852), Scottish lawyer
* Thomas Thomson (botanist) (1817–1878), Scottis ...
, who introduced modern chemical nomenclature in a chart appended to the Chemistry article, and would go on to re-write that article in the 1801 supplement (see below), and
John Robison, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, who wrote several well-regarded articles on sciences then called
natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
From the ancient wo ...
. The third edition established the foundation of the ''Britannica'' as an important and definitive reference work for much of the next century. This edition was also enormously profitable, yielding 42,000 pounds sterling profit on the sale of roughly 10,000 copies. The 3rd edition began the tradition (continued to this day) of dedicating the ''Britannica'' to the reigning British monarch, then
King George III
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...
. In the Supplement to the Third Edition, Gleig called him "the Father of Your People, and enlightened Patron of Arts, Sciences and Literature", and expressed:
The
3rd edition is also famous for its bold article on "Motion", which erroneously rejects
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...
's theory of
gravitation. Instead, Dr. Gleig, or more likely,
James Tytler, wrote that gravity is caused by the
classical element of fire. He seems to have been swayed by
William Jones' ''Essay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy'' (1762), which in turn was based on
John Hutchinson's MA thesis, ''Moses' Principia'', which was written in 1724 but rejected by
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
. Nevertheless, Gleig was sanguine about the errors of the 3rd edition, echoing
William Smellie's sentiment in the 1st edition quoted above:
The first "American" encyclopedia, ''
Dobson's Encyclopædia'', was based almost entirely on the 3rd edition of the ''Britannica'' and published at nearly the same time (1788–1798), together with an analogous supplement (1803), by the Scottish-born printer,
Thomas Dobson. The first United States
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
law was passed on 30 May 1790—although anticipated by Section 8 of Article I of the
United States Constitution (ratified 4 March 1789)—but did not protect foreign publications such as the ''Britannica''. Unauthorized copying of the ''Britannica'' in America was also a problem with the 9th edition (1889). Unlicensed copies were also sold in Dublin by James Moore under the title, ''Moore's Dublin Edition, Encyclopædia Britannica''; this was an exact reproduction of the ''Britannica''
's 3rd edition.
By contrast, Dobson's work had various corrections and amendments for American readers.
Supplement to the third edition, 1801, 1803
A two-volume supplement to the
third edition was published in 1801, having 1,624 pages and 50 copperplates by D. Lizars. A revised edition was published in 1803. This supplement was published by a wine-merchant,
Thomas Bonar, the son-in-law of the ''Britannica's'' owner
Andrew Bell; unfortunately, the two men quarreled and they never spoke for the last ten years of Bell's life (1799–1809). Bonar was friendly to the article authors, however, and conceived the plan of paying them as well as the article reviewers, and of allowing them to retain copyright for separate publication of their work.
The ''Britannica'' explicitly positioned itself as a conservative publication in reaction to the radical 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
Diderot published between 1751 and 1766.
In the royal dedication penned on 10 December 1800, Dr. Gleig elaborated on the editorial purpose of the ''Britannica''
Fourth edition, 1810
The fourth edition was begun in 1800 and completed in 1810, comprising 20 volumes with 16,033 pages and 581 plates engraved by
Andrew Bell. As with the 3rd edition, in which title pages were not printed until the set was complete, and all volumes were given title pages dated 1797, title pages for the 4th edition were sent to bookbinders in 1810, dated that year for all volumes. The editor was Dr.
James Millar, a physician, who was good at scientific topics but criticized for being "slow & dilatory & not well qualified". The mathematical articles of Prof. Wallace were widely praised in the 4th edition. Overall, the 4th edition was a mild expansion of the 3rd, from 18 to 20 volumes, and was updated in its historical, scientific, and biographical articles.
Some of the long articles were entirely re-written for the 4th edition. For example, the 56-page "Botany" of the 3rd edition was replaced in the 4th with a 270-page version by moving all the individual plant articles into one. Conversely, the 53-page "
Metallurgy" of the 3rd was removed, and replaced by the note "see Gilding, Parting, Purifying, Refining, Smithery." The article "Chemistry," which was 261 pages long in the 3rd, written by
James Tytler, and had been re-written in that edition's supplement as a 191-page treatise by
Thomas Thomson Thomas Thomson may refer to:
* Tom Thomson (1877–1917), Canadian painter
* Thomas Thomson (apothecary) (died 1572), Scottish apothecary
* Thomas Thomson (advocate) (1768–1852), Scottish lawyer
* Thomas Thomson (botanist) (1817–1878), Scottis ...
, appears in the 4th edition as an entirely new 358-page article, which, according to the preface to the 5th edition, was authored by Millar himself. The new treatise was necessary because the copyright to the supplement to the 3rd, which included Thomson's excellent treatise, was not owned by Britannica. (Thomson would much later author the article for the 7th edition). The article "Electricity", 125 pages in the 3rd edition, was completely re-written for the 4th edition and was 163 pages. By contrast, the 125-page "
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
" of the 3rd was largely unchanged for the 4th, and the 306-page "Medicine" of the 3rd was only superficially edited in the 4th and of roughly equal length. (Medicine had been a similar 302 pages in the 2nd edition). The 79-page "Agriculture" of the 3rd was entirely and excellently re-written, and is 225 pages, for the 4th edition. Sixty pages of new information were added onto the end of "America," which grew to 138 pages, with an index and new maps. "
Entomology" was expanded from 8 pages and one plate in the 3rd edition to 98 pages and 4 plates in the 4th, with a 3-page index. Human "Physiology" was entirely re-written, and went from 60 pages to 80, with an index. "Physics," on the other hand, is unchanged from the 3rd.
In addition, some long articles appear for the first time in the 4th edition. "Geology" is new, even though the word had been coined in 1735. Accordingly, the 3rd edition's 30-page entry "Earth," as well as its 24-page article "Earthquake," and the geological sections of its article "
Natural History", were dropped, as these topics are found in the 4th edition's newly written article, which is 78 pages long and has its own index. For other examples, the 4th edition has a 96-page article "
Conchology
Conchology () is the study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of molluscs; however, malacology is the study of molluscs as whole organisms, whereas conchology is confined to the study of their shells. It includ ...
", which listing does not appear in the 3rd or its supplement, and "
Erpetology", 60 pages long in the 4th edition, with a 3-page index, is a new listing as well. After "Science" is a new 24-page article "Amusements In Science", which is a virtual
Mr. Wizard
''Mister'', usually written in its contracted form ''Mr.'' or ''Mr'', is a commonly used English honorific for men without a higher honorific, or professional title, or any of various designations of office. The title 'Mr' derived from earlier ...
for the opening of the 19th century.
The majority of copy in the 4th edition, however, is unchanged from the 3rd. Large blocks of text were carried over, line-by-line, unchanged in their typesetting, with some minor editing here and there. For example, the "Boston" article in the 3rd edition contains the sentence, "The following is a description of this capital before the commencement of the present American war." This line is exactly as it had appeared in the 2nd edition, which was written during the war. (The war had been over for years when the 3rd edition was published). In the 4th edition, the word "present" was replaced with "late," the rest of the article remaining entirely unchanged. The article "America" reprinted the entire 81 pages of the 3rd edition, but appended 52 new pages after it, and an index for the 133-page article.
The copyright of the material in the supplement to the 3rd edition was held by
Thomas Bonar, who asked 20,000 pounds sterling for it, which Bell declined. The supplemental material was licensed for the fourth edition for 100 pounds, but this copyright issue remained a problem through the 6th edition and the material was not used. The supplements had to be purchased separately.
Fifth edition, 1817
Andrew Bell died in 1809, one year before the 4th edition was finished. In 1815, his heirs began producing the fifth edition but sold it to
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 ...
, who finished it; Dr. Millar was again the editor. Completed in 1817, the fifth edition sold for 36 pounds sterling (''2011: £'') and consisted of 20 volumes with 16,017 pages and 582 plates. In 1816, Bell's trustees sold the rights to the ''Britannica'' for 14,000 pounds to Archibald Constable, an apprentice bookseller, who had been involved in its publication from 1788. To secure the copyrights for the 3rd edition supplement, Constable gave Bonar a one-third stake in the ''Britannica''; after Bonar's death in 1814, Constable bought his rights to the ''Britannica'' for 4,500 pounds sterling.
![4th5th](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/4th5th.jpg)
The fifth edition was a corrected reprint of the fourth; there is virtually no change in the text. The errata are listed at the end of each volume of the 4th edition, and corrected in the 5th, but the number of errata is small and in some volumes there are none. The plates and plate numbers are all the same, but with the name A. Bell replaced with W. Archibald or other names on all plates, including the maps. Some of the plates have very minor revisions, but they are all basically Bell's work from the 4th or earlier editions, and these new names were probably added for business reasons involving copyright royalties. W. Archibald was probably Constable himself.
Being a reprint of the 4th, set in the same type, Encyclopædia Britannica's 5th edition was one of the last publications in the English language to use the
long s
The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "poſ ...
in print. The long s started being phased out of English publications shortly after the turn of the 19th century, and by 1817 it was archaic. The Supplement To The Fifth edition, (see below), as well as the 6th edition, used a modern font with a short s.
While the 6th volume of the 5th edition was being printed, Constable became owner of Britannica, as well as Bonar's 3rd edition supplements. Legal disputes over the copyright of the 3rd edition supplements continued, however, and for this reason a new supplement was written by Constable's company, which was completed in 1824.
Supplement to the fifth edition, 1824 (later known as the supplement to the fourth, fifth and sixth editions)
After securing sole-ownership rights in December 1816, Constable began work on a supplement to the 5th edition, even before the fifth edition had been released (1817). The supplement was completed in April 1824, consisting of 6 volumes with 4933 pages, 125 plates, 9 maps, 3 "dissertations" and 160 biographies, mainly of people who had died within the preceding 30 years.
This supplement contained a rudimentary form of an index, listing the 669 articles in alphabetical order at the end of volume six, by volume but not page number, but it did not contain any sort of cross referencing. The index was called "Table of the Articles and Treatises Contained in This Work" and was 9 pages long. It was nothing to be compared to a typical encyclopedia index, such as the ones found at the end of the seventh and further editions of Britannica.
This supplement had remarkably illustrious contributors. Constable was friends with Sir
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...
, who contributed the articles "Chivalry", "Romance", and "Drama". To edit the supplement, Constable hired
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 ...
, who recruited other eminent contributors such as Sir
Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for t ...
,
Jean-Baptiste Biot
Jean-Baptiste Biot (; ; 21 April 1774 – 3 February 1862) was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who co-discovered the Biot–Savart law of magnetostatics with Félix Savart, established the reality of meteorites, made an early ba ...
,
John Stuart Mill,
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 177818 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English lan ...
,
David Ricardo
David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a ...
, and
Thomas Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.
In his 1798 book ''An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Mal ...
.
Peter Mark Roget, compiler of the famous
Roget's Thesaurus
''Roget's Thesaurus'' is a widely used English-language thesaurus, created in 1805 by Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer.
History
It was released to the public on 29 April 1852. Roget was i ...
and a former secretary of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
, contributed the entry for
physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
.
Thomas Young's article on
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
included the translation of the
hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
on the
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancien ...
.
The supplement was compiled, for the first five volumes, at a pace which would have given it more than the 6 volumes it eventually would consist of; the alphabet from A-M was put into those five. It was apparently rushed to completion with volume 6, which contained the rest of the alphabet, viz:
*Vol. I: A–ATW, 648 pages.
*Vol. II: AUS–CEY, 680 pages.
*Vol. III: CHE–ECO, 726 pages.
*Vol. IV: EDI–HOR, 708 pages.
*Vol. V: HUN–MOL, 586 pages.
*Vol. VI: NAI–Z, 863 pages.
Sixth edition, 1823
![5th6thEdition](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/5th6thEdition.jpeg)
Constable also produced the sixth edition, which was completed in May, 1823. It was published in 40 half-volume parts, priced 16 shillings in boards (32 pounds for the set). The editor was
Charles Maclaren. The 6th edition was a reprint of the 5th with a modern typeface. It even used the preface to the 5th edition, dated December 1, 1817, as its own. Only the short page, "Advertisement To The Sixth Edition", which was bound in volume 1 after the forward and dated January, 1822, set it apart. In that advertisement, it is claimed that some geographical articles would be updated, and that the articles in the supplement to the 3rd edition would be inserted into the encyclopedia in their proper alphabetical places. Although the advertisement claimed that these articles would be included in this manner, they were not, and the author of the preface to the 7th edition states that none of this material entered the main body until that edition, and even gives a list of the articles which were.
![NYC 5th6th](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/NYC_5th6th.jpeg)
Almost no changes were made to the text, it was basically a remake of the 5th with very minor updates. All in all, the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions are virtually the same as each other. Rather than revising the main text of the encyclopedia with each edition, Constable chose to add all updates to the supplement. It's probable that the 6th edition only exists because of the need to remove the
long s
The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "poſ ...
, which had gone out of style, from the font, which required the whole encyclopedia to be re-typeset.
The Supplement to the 5th edition was finished in 1824, and was sold with those sets, as well as with sets of the 6th edition, to be delivered at its completion. This supplement curiously was started during the production of the 5th edition but was not finished until after the 6th was completed. It also was sold as a unit for owners of the 4th edition, and became known as "Supplement to the 4th, 5th and 6th edition."
Unfortunately, Constable went bankrupt on 19 January 1826 and the rights to the ''Britannica'' were sold on auction; they were eventually bought on 16 July 1828 for 6150
pounds sterling
Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £) is the main unit of sterling, and ...
by a partnership of four men:
Adam Black
Adam Black (20 February 178424 January 1874) was a Scottish publisher and politician. He founded the A & C Black publishing company, and published the 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Life
Black was born in Ch ...
(a publisher), Alexander Wight (a banker), Abram Thomson (a bookbinder) and Thomas Allen, the proprietor of the ''
Caledonian Mercury
The ''Caledonian Mercury'' was a Scottish newspaper, published three times a week between 1720 and 1867. In 2010 an online publication launched using the name.
17th century
A short-lived predecessor, the '' Mercurius Caledonius'', published for ...
''. Not long after, Black bought out his partners and ownership of the ''Britannica'' passed to the Edinburgh publishing firm of
A & C Black.
Britannica by the 6th edition was in some regards hopelessly out of date. The supplement to the 3rd edition contained updates which were not included in it, and which had become dated themselves anyway, the 4th edition expanded the text somewhat but revised very little, and the 5th and 6th were just reprints of the 4th. The supplement to the 4th/5th/6th edition addressed the issue of updates in a clumsy way, often referring back to the encyclopedia, essentially making the reader look everything up twice. What was needed was a completely new edition from the ground up. This was to be accomplished with the magnificent 7th edition.
A. and C. Black editions (7th–9th, 1827–1901)
Seventh edition, 1842
![Rosetta Stone](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Rosetta_stone.jpg)
The 7th edition was begun in 1827 and published from March 1830 to January 1842, although all volumes have title pages dated 1842. It was a new work, not a revision of earlier editions, although some articles from earlier editions and supplements are used. It was sold to subscribers in monthly "parts" of around 133 pages each, at 6 shilling per part, with 6 parts combined into 800 page volumes for 36 shillings. The promise was made in the beginning that there would be 20 volumes, making the total £36 for the set. Volume 1 was only 5 parts, entirely made up of dissertations. Volume 2, in 6 parts, was the beginning of alphabetical listings. The 12th part, another dissertation, was ready in 1831, and would have been the first part of volume 3, but the publishers put it into a separate volume at 12 shillings. In total the subscribers wound up paying for 127 parts (£38, two shillings).
It was edited by
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 ...
, who was assisted by
James Browne, LLD. It consisted of 21 numbered volumes with 17,101 pages and 506 plates. It was the first edition to include a general index for all articles, a practice that was maintained until 1974. The index was 187 pages, and was either bound alone as an unnumbered thin volume, or was bound together with volume I. Many illustrious contributors were recruited to this edition, including Sir
David Brewster,
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson De Quincey (; 15 August 17858 December 1859) was an English writer, essayist, and literary critic, best known for his '' Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'' (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quinc ...
,
Antonio Panizzi
Sir Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi (16 September 1797 – 8 April 1879), better known as Anthony Panizzi, was a naturalised British citizen of Italian birth, and an Italian patriot. He was a librarian, becoming the Principal Librarian (i.e. head ...
and
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson FRS HFRSE FRSA DCL (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father ...
.
James Wilson James Wilson may refer to:
Politicians and government officials
Canada
*James Wilson (Upper Canada politician) (1770–1847), English-born farmer and political figure in Upper Canada
* James Crocket Wilson (1841–1899), Canadian MP from Quebe ...
did all of Zoology, Dr. Hampden did all of Greek philosophy, and
William Hosking contributed the excellent article Architecture.
Thomas Thomson Thomas Thomson may refer to:
* Tom Thomson (1877–1917), Canadian painter
* Thomas Thomson (apothecary) (died 1572), Scottish apothecary
* Thomas Thomson (advocate) (1768–1852), Scottish lawyer
* Thomas Thomson (botanist) (1817–1878), Scottis ...
, who wrote Chemistry for the 3rd edition supplement 40 years earlier, was recruited to write that article again for the 7th edition. Mathematical diagrams and illustrations were made from woodcuts, and for the first time in Britannica's history, were printed on the same pages as the text, in addition to the copperplates.
The 7th edition, when complete, went on sale for £24 per set. However, Adam Black had invested over £108,766 in its production: £5,354 for advertising, £8,755 for editing, £13,887 for 167 contributors, £13,159 for plates, £29,279 for paper, and £19,813 for the printing.
In the end, roughly 5,000 sets were sold but Black considered himself well-rewarded in intellectual prestige.
Title pages for all volumes were printed in 1842 and delivered with the completed set. An index to the entire set was created that year as well, and was the first of its kind for Britannica. Being only 187 pages long, it did not warrant its own volume, and was sent to bookbinders with instructions to include it at the beginning of volume 1, the dissertations volume, which had been printed in 1829. This same arrangement would also be used for the 8th edition, but not the 9th.
Eighth edition, 1860
![8thEditionAdvert](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/8thEditionAdvert.jpeg)
The 8th edition was published from 1853 to 1860, with title pages for each volume dated the year that volume was printed. It contained 21 numbered volumes, with 17,957 pages and 402 plates. The index, published in 1861, was 239 pages, and was either bound alone as an unnumbered 22nd volume, or was bound together with volume I, the dissertations volume. Four of these dissertations were carried over from the 7th edition, and two were new to the 8th. The five included in volume 1 of the 8th (1853) were authored by Dugald Stewart, James Mackintosh, Richard Whately, John Playfair, and John Leslie, in that order, with the Whately work being a new one. A sixth dissertation, by J.D. Forbes, was issued in 1856, in a separate quarto volume, "gratis, along with Vol. XII".
The alphabetical encyclopedia began at the beginning of volume 2. The price was reduced to 24 shillings per volume, cloth-bound. In addition to the Edinburgh sets, more sets were authorized by Britannica to the London publishers Simpkin, Marshall and Company, and to
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily ...
of Boston.
Since
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 ...
died in 1847, Adam Black selected for its editor Dr.
Thomas Stewart Traill
Thomas Stewart Traill (29 October 1781 – 30 July 1862) was a British physician, chemist, meteorologist, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence. He was the grandfather of the physicist, meteorologist and geologist Robert Traill Omon ...
, a professor of medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh University. When Dr. Traill fell ill, he was assisted by a young Scottish philosopher, John Downes. Black was able to hold costs to roughly £75,655. This edition began the tradition of a contributors' banquet to celebrate the edition's completion (5 June 1861).
The Eighth edition is a thorough revision, even more so than the Seventh. Some long articles were carried over from the 7th edition, but most were completely re-written, and new articles by illustrious contributors were added. In all, there were 344 contributors, including
Lord Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1 ...
,
Charles Kingsley,
Robert Chambers, the Rev.
Charles Merivale, Dr.
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of ...
, Baron
Robert Bunsen
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (;
30 March 1811
– 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...
, Sir
John Herschel, Professors
Richard Owen,
John Stuart Blackie
John Stuart Blackie FRSE (28 July 1809 – 2 March 1895) was a Scottish scholar and man of letters.
Biography
He was born in Glasgow, on Charlotte Street, the son of Kelso-born banker Alexander Blackie (d.1846) and Helen Stodart. He was ...
and
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).
Photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...
is listed for the first time. This edition also featured the first American contributor to the ''Britannica'',
Edward Everett
Edward Everett (April 11, 1794 – January 15, 1865) was an American politician, Unitarian pastor, educator, diplomat, and orator from Massachusetts. Everett, as a Whig, served as U.S. representative, U.S. senator, the 15th governor of Mass ...
, who wrote a 40,000-word hagiographic biography of
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
The consequences of reducing the costs of production of the 8th edition can be seen today in surviving sets. With only 402 plates, this edition has the fewest since the second edition, and far fewer woodcuts within the text pages were used than in the 7th edition. The maps are all reprinted from the 7th edition, even the ones that should have been updated. In the first few volumes, a sheet of onion-skin paper faces each plate, but after volume 6, they were eliminated. To save money, the end pages and covers were not marbled, as this was an expensive process. Finally, the end pages contain advertisements for other products sold by A & C. Black, such as atlases and travel guides, and advertisements encouraging subscribers to continue their enrollments.
Ninth edition, 1875–1889
The landmark ninth edition, often called "the Scholar's Edition",
was published from January 1875 to 1889 in 25 volumes, with volume 25 the index volume. Unlike the first two Black editions, there were no preliminary dissertations, the alphabetical listing beginning in volume 1. Up to 1880, the editor, and author of the Foreword, was
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 after a series of Scots—and
W. Robertson Smith afterwards. An intellectual prodigy who mastered advanced scientific and mathematical topics, Smith was a professor of theology at the
Free Church College in
Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...
, and was the first contributor to the ''Britannica'' who addressed the historical interpretation of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
, a topic then already familiar on the Continent of Europe. Dr. Smith contributed several articles to the 9th edition, but lost his teaching position on 24 May 1881, due to the controversy his (ir)religious articles aroused; he was immediately hired to be joint editor-in-chief with Baynes.
The 9th and 11th editions are often lauded as high points for scholarship; the 9th included yet another series of illustrious contributors such as
Thomas Henry 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 stori ...
(article on "Evolution"),
Lord Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Am ...
(articles on "Optics, Geometrical" and "Wave Theory of Light"),
Algernon Charles Swinburne (article on "John Keats"),
William Michael Rossetti
William Michael Rossetti (25 September 1829 – 5 February 1919) was an English writer and critic.
Early life
Born in London, Rossetti was a son of immigrant Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti and his wife Frances Rossetti ''née'' Polidor ...
,
Amelia Edwards
Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (7 June 1831 – 15 April 1892), also known as Amelia B. Edwards, was an English novelist, journalist, traveller and Egyptologist. Her literary successes included the ghost story "The Phantom Coach" (1864), the novel ...
(article on "Mummy"),
Prince Kropotkin (articles on "Moscow", "Odessa" and "Siberia"),
James George Frazer (articles on "Taboo" and "Totemism"),
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University o ...
(article on "Apparitions"),
Lord Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1 ...
,
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 ...
(articles on "Atom" and "Ether"),
Lord Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 182417 December 1907) was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, he did important ...
(articles on "Elasticity" and "Heat") and
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
(article on "Mural Decoration").
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
, then 25, contributed an article about
Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
that, being unenthusiastic, was never printed.
There were roughly 1100 contributors altogether, a handful of whom were women; this edition was also the first to include a significant article about women ("Women, Law Relating to"). Evolution was listed for the first time, in the wake of
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
's writings, but the subject was treated as if still controversial, and a complete working of the subject would have to wait for the 11th edition. The 8th edition has no listing for the subject at all.
Compared to the 8th edition, the 9th was far more luxurious, with thick boards and high-quality leather bindings, premier paper, and a production which took full advantage of the technological advances in printing in the years between the 1850s and 1870s. Great use was made of the new ability to print large graphic illustrations on the same pages as the text, as opposed to limiting illustrations to separate copperplates. Although this technology had first been used in a primitive fashion the 7th edition, and to a much lesser extent in the 8th, in the 9th edition there were thousands of quality illustrations set into the text pages, in addition to the plates. The 9th edition was a critical success, and roughly 8,500 sets were sold in Britain.
A & C Black authorized the American firms of
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan R ...
of New York,
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily ...
of Boston, and Samuel L. Hall of New York, to print, bind and distribute additional sets in the United States, and provided them with stereotype plates for text and graphics, specifications on the color and tanning quality of the leather bindings, etc., so the American-produced sets would be identical to the Edinburgh sets except for the title pages, and that they would be of the same high quality as the Edinburgh sets. Scribner's volumes and Hall volumes were often mixed together in sets by N.Y. distributors and sold this way as they were interchangeable, and such sets are still found this way. A total of 45,000 authorized sets were produced this way for the US market.
Scribners' claimed U. S. copyright on several of the individual articles.
In spite of this, ''several hundred thousand'' cheaply produced bootlegged copies were also sold in the U.S., which still did not have copyright laws protecting foreign publications.
Famous infringers of that era include the
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
n Joseph M. Stoddart, who employed a spy in the ''Britannica's'' own printshop, Neill and Company, in Edinburgh. The spy would steal the proofreader's copies and send them by fastest mail to the United States, allowing Stoddart to publish his version simultaneously with the ''Britannica'' and at nearly half the price ($5 versus $9 per volume). His right to do so was upheld in an infamous decision by Justice Arthur Butler who argued
Another successful infringer was Henry G. Allen, who developed a photographic reproduction method for the ''Britannica'' and charged only half as much as Stoddart ($2.50 per volume). Other people alleged to have copied the 9th edition included
John Wanamaker and the Reverend
Isaac Kaufmann Funk
Isaac Kaufmann Funk (September 10, 1839April 4, 1912) was an American Lutheran minister, editor, lexicographer, publisher, and spelling reformer. He was the co-founder of Funk & Wagnalls Company, the father of author Wilfred J. Funk (who fou ...
of the
Funk and Wagnalls
Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including ''A Standard Dictionary of the English Language'' (1st ed. 1893–5), and the ''Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia'' (25 volumes, 1st ed. 1912).Funk & Wagnalls N ...
encyclopedia. Richard S. Pearle & Co. of Chicago photoengraved some sets in 1891, and added 3 volumes of "American Revisions and additions," the first 2 in 1891 and the third in 1892. In 1893 they published sets with volumes 1–24 from the original Britannica, the 3 "American" volumes 25–27, and the index as Vol. 28. Some copies of this version say they were printed by Werner, also of Chicago, and from 1902 to 1907 Werner printed the commonly found "New Werner Edition," of 30 volumes (24 volumes plus 5 ''New American Supplement'' volumes and a new index for all 29 volumes). In 1890, James Clarke published the ''Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica, Revised and Amended'' which was only 10 volumes, as was the 1895 Belford-Clark issue by the same name (Chicago).
In addition to American unauthorized copies, there were American supplements which were written to be appended to authorized copies of Britannica. The Hubbard Brothers of Philadelphia produced a 5-volume American supplement between 1882 and 1889, in quality leather bindings designed to match the authorized volumes in appearance. Of good scholarship, it contained biographies of Americans and geographies of US places, as well as other US interests not mentioned in the main encyclopedia.
In 1896, Scribner's Sons, which had claimed US copyright on many of the articles, obtained court orders to shut down bootlegger operations, some of whose printing plates were melted down as part of the enforcement.
Publishers were able to get around this order, however, by re-writing the articles that Scribner's had copyrighted; for example, the "United States" article in Werner's 1902 unlicensed edition was newly written and copyrighted by R.S. Pearle.
In 1903,
Saalfield Publishing
The Saalfield Publishing Company published children's books and other products from 1900 to 1977. It was once one of the largest publishers of children's materials in the world.
The company was founded in 1900 in Akron, Ohio, by Arthur J. Saalfi ...
published the ''Americanized''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
in 8 volumes with a 4 volume supplement (when the British edition had 24 volumes). The
Encyclopædia Britannica Company had acquired all the rights to the encyclopedia in America. In addition,
D. Appleton & Company claimed that the 4 volume supplement used material from ''
Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography
''Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography'' is a six-volume collection of biographies of notable people involved in the history of the New World. Published between 1887 and 1889, its unsigned articles were widely accepted as authoritative f ...
''. To avoid further litigation, the suit against Saalfield Publishing was settled in court "by a stipulation in which the defendants agree not to print or sell any further copies of the offending work, to destroy all printed sheets, to destroy or melt the portions of the plates from which the infringing matter in the Supplement as it appears in the ''Americanized
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' has been printed, and to pay D. Appleton & Co. the sum of $2000 damages."
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 ...
was an American businessman, and a close associate of James Clarke, one of the leading American bootleggers. Hooper recognized the potential profit in the ''Britannica'' and, again in 1896, learned that both the ''Britannica'' and ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' of London were in financial straits. Hooper formed a partnership with Clarke, his brother George Clarke, and
Walter Montgomery Jackson Walter Montgomery Jackson (1863–1923) was the founder of encyclopedia publisher Grolier, Inc., and he was the partner of Horace Everett Hooper in publishing the 10th edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and in developing its 11th edition. ...
to sell the ''Britannica'' under the sponsorship of ''The Times'', meaning that ''The Times'' would advertise the sale and lend its respectable name. Hooper and his energetic advertising manager, Henry Haxton, introduced many innovative sales methods: full-page advertisements in ''The Times'', testimonials from celebrities, buying on installment plans, and a long series of so-called 'final offers'. Although the crass marketing was criticized as inappropriate to the ''Britannica's'' history and scholarship, the unprecedented profits delighted the manager of ''The Times'',
Charles Frederic Moberly Bell,
who assessed Hooper as "a ranker who loved to be accepted as a gentleman. Treat him as a gentleman and one had no trouble with him; treat him as an essentially dishonest ranker and one got all the trouble there was to get." The American partnership sold over 20,000 copies of the ''Britannica'' in the United States (four runs of 5000), after which Hooper and Jackson bought out the two Clarke brothers in early 1900.
A & C Black had moved to London in 1895 and, on 9 May 1901, sold all the rights to the ''Britannica'' to Hooper and Jackson, then living in London.
The sale of the ''Britannica'' to Americans has left a lingering resentment among some British citizens, especially when it is perceived that parochial American concerns are emphasized.
For example, one British critic wrote on the centenary of the sale:
First American editions (10th–14th, 1901–1973)
Tenth edition (supplement to the 9th), 1902-03
Again under the sponsorship of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' of London, and with Adam & Charles Black in the UK, the new owners quickly produced an 11-volume supplement to the 9th edition; being 9 volumes of text, 25–33, a map volume, 34, which was 1 inch taller than the other volumes, and a new index, vol 35, also an inch taller than 25–33, which covered the first 33 volumes (the maps volume 34 had its own index). The editors 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), ...
, Sir
Donald Mackenzie Wallace
Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace (11 November 1841 – 10 January 1919) was a Scottish public servant, writer, editor and foreign correspondent of ''The Times'' (London).
Early life
Donald Mackenzie Wallace was born to Robert Wallace of Boghead, ...
,
Arthur T. Hadley and
Franklin Henry Hooper, the brother of the owner Horace Hooper.
Notable contributors to the 10th edition included
Laurence Binyon,
Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of ther ...
,
Walter Camp
Walter Chauncey Camp (April 7, 1859 – March 14, 1925) was an American football player, coach, and sports writer known as the "Father of American Football". Among a long list of inventions, he created the sport's line of scrimmage and the system ...
(articles on "Base-ball" and "Rowing"),
Laurence Housman
Laurence Housman (; 18 July 1865 – 20 February 1959) was an English playwright, writer and illustrator whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1950s. He studied art in London. He was a younger brother of the poet A. E. Housman and his ...
,
Joseph Jefferson,
Frederick Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard,
Frederic William Maitland
Frederic William Maitland (28 May 1850 – ) was an English historian and lawyer who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history.
Early life and education, 1850–72
Frederic William Maitland was born at 53 Guilford Street, L ...
,
John Muir
John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist ...
(article on "Yosemite"),
Fridtjof Nansen (articles on "Greenland" and "Polar Regions: The Arctic Ocean"),
Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (15 July 1865 – 14 August 1922), was a British newspaper and publishing magnate. As owner of the '' Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Mirror'', he was an early developer of popular journa ...
(part of article on "Newspapers"),
Sir Flinders Petrie
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...
(part of article on "Egyptology"),
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot (August 11, 1865October 4, 1946) was an American forester and politician. He served as the fourth chief of the U.S. Division of Forestry, as the first head of the United States Forest Service, and as the 28th governor of Pennsy ...
,
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch,
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Amo ...
(article on "Argon"),
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
,
Carl Schurz,
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington and
Sir J. J. Thomson.
Taken together, the 35 volumes were dubbed the "10th edition". The re-issue of the 9th edition under the moniker "10th edition" caused some outrage, since many articles of the 9th edition were over 25 years old. This led to the popular joke: "''The Times'' is behind the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' is behind the times."
![Britannica10th](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Britannica10th.jpg)
The 1903 advertising campaign for the tenth edition was an onslaught of
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 ...
: hand-written letters, telegrams, limited-time offers, etc.. The following quote, written in 1926, captures the mood
An excellent collection of prospectuses received by a single person (C. L. Parker) in that year has been preserved by the
Bodleian Library (catalogued under #39899.c.1). The advertising was clearly targeted at middle and lower-middle-class people seeking to improve themselves.
The advertising campaign was remarkably successful; over 70,000 sets were sold, bringing in over £600,000 profit.
When one British expert expressed surprise to
Hooper that so many people would want an outdated encyclopedia, he replied, "They didn't; I ''made'' them want it."
Even after the Tenth edition was published, some American infringement companies were still printing thousands of copies of the Ninth without the supplements. See above. Some of these companies were adding their own "Americanized" supplements, but none of them reproduced the Tenth. Copyright violation did not end until shortly before the Eleventh edition came out.
Eleventh edition, 1910
![11Britannica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/11Britannica.JPG)
The renowned eleventh edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' was begun in 1903, and published in 1910–1911 in 28 volumes, with a one-volume Index. Edited by
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), ...
in London and by
Franklin Henry Hooper in
New York, the 11th edition was the first to be published substantially at one time, instead of volume by volume. Its illustrious contributors are legion, including
Baden Baden-Powell
Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell, (22 May 1860 – 3 October 1937) was a military aviation pioneer, and President of the Royal Aeronautical Society from 1900 to 1907.
Family
Baden was the youngest child of Baden Powell, and the brother o ...
writing on
kite-flying;
Arthur Eddington on astronomy;
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhoo ...
on
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
and
Donald Tovey
Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 187510 July 1940) was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist. He had been best known for his '' Essays in Musical Analysis'' and his editions of works by Bach ...
on music. Sometimes called the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', this edition is still highly regarded for its lucid explanations of scholarly subjects. Being in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...
, the complete text is freely available online. The 11th edition retained the high scholarship and eminent contributors that marked the 9th edition, but tempered that scholarship with shorter, simpler articles that were more intelligible to lay-readers. Thus, the 9th and 11th editions had 17,000 and 40,000 articles, respectively, although they were roughly equivalent in size. This shift accommodated the American business strategy of popularizing the ''Britannica'' for a mass market, while still retaining its quality as a reference work. The high literary and scholarly level of the 11th edition is largely due to the zeal of its owner,
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 ...
, who held scholarship in high regard and spared no expense to make the 11th edition as excellent as possible.
After a heated legal dispute and all-too-public corporate wrangling over ownership of the ''Britannica'' (1908–1909), Hooper bought out
Walter Jackson, becoming the sole owner of the ''Britannica''. The public furor caused ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' to cancel its sponsorship contract with Hooper, feeling that the interests of the newspaper were not being served.
After failing to win over
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
, Hooper managed to secure
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
as a new sponsor; thus, the 11th edition was published initially by
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
, and scholars from Cambridge University were allowed to review the text and veto any overly aggressive advertising.
Perhaps because of this, the ''Britannica'' encountered financial difficulties, whereupon it was licensed to
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 ...
and Co. of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, who issued a physically smaller but complete version known as the "handy edition," with each volume almost pocket-sized. The owner of Sears, philanthropist
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in ...
, was friends with Horace Hooper and enthusiastic about the ''Britannica's'' promise; he single-handedly saved the ''Britannica'' from
bankruptcy several times over the next fifteen years. Although Sears' handy set was successful in 1915–1916, sales dropped significantly when the United States entered World War I.
The 11th edition employed 35 named female contributors, out of 1500 total (2.3%). Although this was not much of an increase over the 10th edition (which named 37 female contributors out of 1800 total), it was heralded publicly as a major advance in recognizing the contributions of women in learned circles.
However, the 11th edition did employ hundreds of women to write unsigned articles; some women, such as Irish medical expert Harriet Hennessy, even rose to be (uncredited) department editors.
Sales figures for the 11th edition were comparable to those of the 9th, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies including the unlicensed sets. Unlike the 9th, however, the 11th edition was not infringed, all sets being printed legitimately by Britannica. It can be seen that the 9th and 11th editions were massively better-sellers than previous editions. This is mainly due to the increase in population of, and sales in, the United States, which were mere colonies with low population when Britannica started out in 1768.
Twelfth and thirteenth editions (competing supplements to the eleventh)
The poor sales of the war years brought the ''Britannica'' to the brink of
bankruptcy. The
CEO of
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 ...
,
philanthropist Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in ...
, was devoted to the mission of the ''Britannica'' and bought its rights on 24 February 1920 from his friend
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 ...
for $1.25 million. In 1922, a 3-volume supplement to the eleventh edition was released that summarized the developments just before, during and after World War I; these three volumes, taken together with the eleventh edition of 1910, became known as the twelfth edition. The articles describing World War I and the political changes brought about by it took up a large portion of the supplement, but articles on such things as radio (still called wireless telephony) are informative. The editor of the supplement was
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), ...
, who also had been the main editor of the eleventh edition, as well as the 1902 eleven-volume supplement to the ninth edition, known as the tenth edition. Horace Hooper died in 1922, a few weeks after the publication of the twelfth edition.
This edition was a commercial failure, losing Sears roughly $1.75 million, after which Sears gave it back to Hooper's widow, Harriett Meeker Cox, and her brother, William J. Cox, who ran the company from 1923 to 1928.
The passage of a few years led to a better perspective on that era. In 1926, the ''Britannica'' released three new volumes covering the history of 1910–1926, which were intended to supplant those of the twelfth edition. Again taken together with the eleventh edition, the new volumes became known as the thirteenth edition, which maintained the ''Britannica's'' tradition of illustrious contributors:
Harry Houdini,
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 ...
,
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
,
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...
,
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 ...
,
Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch ( , ; 2 October 1851 – 20 March 1929) was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War. An aggressive, even reckless commander at the First Marne, Flanders and Ar ...
,
Gustav Stresemann
Gustav Ernst Stresemann (; 10 May 1878 – 3 October 1929) was a German statesman who served as chancellor in 1923 (for 102 days) and as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, during the Weimar Republic.
His most notable achievement was the reconci ...
,
Thomas G. Masaryk and
Elihu Root.
In 1928, Rosenwald bought back the rights to the ''Britannica'', leaving Cox as publisher. Cox argued forcefully for a new fourteenth edition, pointing out that the eleventh edition (the bulk of the twelfth and thirteenth editions) was badly out of date. Cox also tried to involve the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
in producing the ''Britannica'', even including a $1 million advance from Rosenwald as a temptation; however, the trustees of the University turned down his proposal, a choice they almost repeated a generation later under
William Benton.
Fourteenth edition, 1929
By 1926, the eleventh edition was beginning to show its age, and work on a new edition was begun. The editors were
J. L. 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 ...
in London and
Franklin Henry Hooper in
New York. It has 24 volumes, reduced from 29 in the 11th edition, yet has 45,000 articles compared to 37,000.
[as stated by J.L. Garvin in his original 1929 introduction to the 14th] It has 15,000 illustrations, of which 1,500 are full plates.
The 14th edition took three years to complete, at the then exorbitant cost of $2.5 million, all of it invested by
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in ...
of
Sears, Roebuck and Company
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 ...
. It was very different from the 11th edition, having fewer volumes and simpler articles, continuing the business strategy of popularizing the ''Britannica'' for the American mass market at the expense of its scholarship.
The 14th edition also drew criticism for deleting information unflattering to the
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. Nevertheless, the 14th also included many illustrious contributors, including eighteen
Nobel laureates in science, such as
Robert Millikan
Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric ...
,
Albert Abraham Michelson
Albert Abraham Michelson FFRS HFRSE (surname pronunciation anglicized as "Michael-son", December 19, 1852 – May 9, 1931) was a German-born American physicist of Polish/Jewish origin, known for his work on measuring the speed of light and espe ...
and
Arthur Compton. More coverage was given to popular entertainment, with
Gene Tunney
James Joseph Tunney (May 25, 1897 – November 7, 1978) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1915 to 1928. He held the world heavyweight title from 1926 to 1928, and the American light heavyweight title twice between 1922 and 1 ...
writing on
boxing
Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...
,
Lillian Gish on
acting and
Irene Castle
Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers and dance teachers who appeared on Broadway and in silent films in the early 20th century. They are credited with reviving the popularity of modern dancing. Castle was a st ...
on
ballroom dancing
Ballroom dance is a set of partner dances, which are enjoyed both socially and competitively around the world, mostly because of its performance and entertainment aspects. Ballroom dancing is also widely enjoyed on stage, film, and television. ...
.
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 ...
contributed a well-regarded article on
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...
.
In all, there were roughly 3500 named contributors, of which roughly half were American.
The 14th edition was again criticized for
sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers pri ...
, by a woman who wrote to editor Walter Yust that too many biographies were of men; Yust made a count and found that 6% of its 13,000 biographies were of
women
A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...
.
The 14th edition was published in September 1929, and had 23 volumes with a one-volume Index that also contained a complete atlas. Unfortunately, the
Great Depression struck scarcely a month after the release of the 14th edition, and sales plummeted. Despite the unfailing support of the
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 ...
company, the ''Britannica'' almost went bankrupt over the next few years. Rosenwald died in 1932, and General
Robert E. Wood took over; Cox was removed as publisher and the Secretary-Treasurer of Sears,
Elkan Harrison Powell, was installed as the new President of the ''Britannica''. In that same year, the ''Britannica's'' headquarters were moved to Chicago, where they have remained.
Policy of continuous revision
E. H. Powell identified and fixed a key vulnerability of ''Britannica'', namely, that its sales (and, hence, the company's income) fluctuated strongly over the life-cycle of an edition. After the release of a new edition, sales would generally begin strong, and decline gradually for 10–20 years as the edition began to show its age; finally, sales would drop off precipitously with the announcement that work had begun on a new edition, since few people would buy an obsolete encyclopedia that would soon be updated. These strong fluctuations in sales led to economic hardship for the ''Britannica''.
To address this problem, Powell suggested in 1933 the policy of continuous revision, with the goal of keeping the ''Britannica'' "always timely and always salable". The basic idea was to maintain a continuous editorial staff that would constantly revise the articles on a fixed schedule. Earlier encyclopedias did not maintain a continuous editorial staff, but rather assembled one just prior to beginning a new edition. Rather than releasing supplemental editions or volumes, new printings would be made every year with only enough copies made to cover the sales for that year. An analysis of the ''Britannica's'' articles suggested that roughly 75% required only occasional revising, whereas 25% required revision every 1–3 years. The articles were therefore divided into 30 classifications and a schedule for their revision worked out, such that every article would be checked at least twice a decade.
Powell also conceived the ''Britannica's'' "Book of the Year", in which a single volume would be released every year covering the developments of the previous year, particularly in rapidly changing fields such as science, technology, culture and politics. The "Book of the Year" was published in print annually from 1938 to 2018. Powell also introduced the Library Research Service (1936), in which owners of the ''Britannica'' could write to have their personal questions researched and answered by the editorial staff.
Under Powell's leadership, the ''Britannica'' began to capitalize on its reputation by aggressively developing "spin-offs", such as the 12-volume ''Britannica Junior'' for children (published 1934, and revised to 15 volumes in 1947), the historical timeline ''The March of Man'' (published 1935, and edited by Albert Bushwell Hart, Isaac J. Cox and Lawrence H. Dawson), the ''Encyclopædia Britannica World Atlas'' (published 1942, and prepared by G. Donald Hudson) and ''
10 Eventful Years'', a summary of the national and international events surrounding World War II (1937–1946).
Transfer of ownership to William Benton
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 ...
published the ''Britannica'' until 1943. In 1941, Sears offered the rights to the ''Britannica'' as a gift to the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
. The story of this offer was recounted at the
bicentennial banquet of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''
The
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
declined the offer, viewing the mission of the university as not entirely consistent with a large commercial publishing house; however it continues even today to be involved in its production, offering editorial advice and allowing its name to be associated with the ''Britannica''.
Thus, in 1943, the wealthy and powerful
William Benton, a former U.S. senator and advertising executive, obtained exclusive control of the ''Britannica'', which he published until his death in 1973. His widow Helen Hemingway Benton continued to publish the ''Britannica'' until her own death in 1974. 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 ...
continued to manage the ''Britannica'' from 1980 until it was sold to
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 ( ...
in 1996. The University of Chicago was the sole beneficiary of the Foundation, and in the mid-1990s the university provided funding to stem the encyclopedia's losses.
The fifteenth edition
First version (1974–1984)
Despite the policy of continuous revision, the 14th edition of the ''Britannica'' gradually became outdated. Beginning in the early 1960s, the failings of the 14th edition began to be collated and published by
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
Harvey Einbinder, culminating in his highly critical 390-page book, ''The Myth of the Britannica'' (1964).
[Einbinder, Harvey ''The Myth of the Britannica''. New York: Grove Press, 1964 (OCLC 152581687)/ London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1964 (OCLC 807782651) / New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972. (OCLC 286856)] Goaded into action, the ''Britannica'' began to work on a new edition, the current 15th.
The 15th edition was produced over ten years at a cost of $32 million and released in 1974 in 30 volumes. The so-called ''New Encyclopædia Britannica'' (or ''Britannica 3'') had a unique three-part organization: a single ''Propædia'' (''Primer for Education'') volume, which aimed to provide an outline of all known, indeed knowable, information; a 10-volume ''Micropædia'' (''Small Education'') of 102,214 short articles (strictly less than 750 words); and a 19-volume ''Macropædia'' (''Large Education'') of 4,207 longer, scholarly articles with references, similar to those of the 9th and 11th editions.
The ''Micropædia'' and ''Macropædia'' articles are listed in alphabetical order; the 4,287 contributors to the ''Macropædia'' articles are identified scrupulously, but the ''Micropædia'' articles are generally anonymous and unreferenced.
This 15th edition had no general index, which had been a feature of the ''Britannica'' since its 7th edition; even in the 2nd edition, individual long articles had their own indices. The idea 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 ...
was that the ''Propædia'' and the ''Micropædia'' could serve the role of an index. More generally, Dr. Adler felt that the ''Britannica'' should not merely serve as a reference work, but also aspire to be a categorization of ''omne scibile'' (everything knowable), to fulfill
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
's grand conception of
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epis ...
. Thus, the ''Propædia'' was intended to be the road-map of all knowledge, within which every fact, technique, and theory could be organized. With this edition EB became the first encyclopedia that serves both functions of fact-checking and self-education.
The lack of an index and the unusual organization into ''two'' sets of alphabetically organized articles provoked much criticism.
In a typical contemporary assessment, "It is called the ''Micropædia'', for 'little knowledge,' and little knowledge is what it provides. It has proved to be grotesquely insufficient as an index, radically constricting the utility of the ''Macropædia.''" or, more laconically, "This arrangement has nothing to recommend it except commercial novelty". Most readers could not predict whether a given subject would be found in ''Micropædia'' or the ''Macropædia''; the criteria by which the articles were sorted were not obvious even to scholars,
despite Dr. Adler's claims that the sorting followed naturally from the ''Propædia's'' outline of all knowledge.
Second version (1985–2010)
In 1985, the ''Britannica'' responded to reader requests by restoring the index as a two-volume set. The number of topics indexed by the ''Britannica'' has fluctuated from 500,000 (1985, the same as in 1954) to 400,000 (1989,1991) to 700,000 in the 2007 print version. Presumably, this recent increase reflects the introduction of efficient electronic indexing, since the size of the encyclopedia has remained nearly constant at approximately 40 million words from 1954 to the present and far less than 40% of the encyclopedia has changed from 1985 to 2007.
Under the editorship of
Philip W. Goetz, the 1985 version of the 15th edition introduced other major changes. The 4,207 articles of the first version ''Macropædia'' were combined into 674 longer articles; for example, the individual articles for each of the 50
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
s were merged into what became a 310-page article "
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
". The ''
Macropædia
The 17-volume ''Macropædia'' is the third part of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''; the other two parts are the 12-volume '' Micropædia'' and the 1-volume ''Propædia''. The name ''Macropædia'' is a neologism coined by Mortimer J. Adler from ...
'' was also restricted somewhat from 19 volumes to the present 17 volumes. At the same time, the number of ''
Micropædia
The 12-volume ''Micropædia'' is one of the three parts of the 15th edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the other two being the one-volume ''Propædia'' and the 17-volume ''Macropædia''. The name ''Micropædia'' is a neologism coined by ...
'' volumes was increased from 10 to the present 12 volumes, although the number of articles was reduced from 102,214 to roughly 65,000. The strict 750-word limit was softened to allow articles of medium length, such as
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, which almost fills one page. Superficially, 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 ...
s Outline of Knowledge was simplified for easier use. In reality, by breaking the intrinsic links between a topic in ''
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 ...
'' with its associated EB articles the intended function (or usefulness) of ''
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 ...
'' is hindered significantly.
On March 14, 2012, Britannica announced it would not be printing any more sets of its paper version, which accounted for less than 1 percent of its sales, and would instead focus on its DVD and online versions. It had not printed any new sets since 2010.
The Global Edition
Britannica Global Edition was printed in 2009. It contained 30 volumes and 18,251 pages, with 8,500 photographs, maps, flags, and illustrations in smaller "compact" volumes. It contained over 40,000 articles written by scholars from across the world, including Nobel Prize winners. Unlike the 15th edition, it did not contain Macro- and Micropedia sections, but ran A through Z as all editions up to the 14th had. It currently is out of print and sold out. The last printing was in 2011. The following is Britannica's description of the work:
Development of electronic versions
In the 1980s,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
approached Britannica to collaborate on a
CD-ROM encyclopedia, but the offer was declined. Senior managers at Britannica were confident in their control of the market and that their healthy profits would continue. At this time complete sets of the encyclopedia were priced between
$1,500 and $2,200, and the product was considered part of a luxury brand with an impeccable reputation handed down from generation to generation. The management did not believe that a CD-ROM could adequately compete or supplement their business. Microsoft responded by using content from ''
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia'' to create what is now known as ''
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 ...
''.
In 1981, the first digital version of the ''Britannica'' was created for the
LexisNexis
LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer info ...
service.
In 1990, the ''Britannica's'' sales reached an all-time high of $650 million, but ''
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 ...
'', released in 1993, soon became a software staple with almost every computer purchase and the ''Britannica's'' market share plummeted. Britannica countered by offering a CD-ROM version of their product, although it could not generate the print version's $500–600 in sales commissions. Britannica decided to charge $995 for just the CD-ROM, while bundling a free disc with the print version, hoping that including the CD-ROM would persuade buyers to stay with the brand.
In 1994, an online version was launched,
with subscriptions for sale for $2,000. By 1996 the price of the CD-ROM had dropped to $200, and sales had dropped to $325 million—about half of their 1990 levels. Only 55,000 hard copy versions were sold in 1994, compared with 117,000 in 1990, and sales later fell to 20,000. Facing financial pressure, Britannica was bought in 1996 by Swiss financier
Jacob Safra
Jacob Safra ( ar, يعقوب صفرا; 1891 – 27 May 1963) was a Syrian-Lebanese banker. The Safras were bankers and gold traders engaged in the financing of trade between Beirut, Aleppo, Istanbul and Alexandria.
Biography
The Safra family w ...
for $135 million, a fraction of its book value. Safra introduced severe price-cutting measures to try 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
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
.
In 2003, Britannica co-operated with a
Taiwanese company to provide a
Traditional Chinese
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays ...
-English bilingual online encyclopedia following the 2002 edition of Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia (the first bilingual product of Britannica) and announced plans to translate the rest of the encyclopedia into Chinese.
Former editor-in-chief
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 ...
believes that Britannica failed to exploit its early advantages in the market for electronic encyclopedias. Britannica had, for example, published the second
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...
encyclopedia titled
''Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia'' as early as 1989 (the first one being the ''
Academic American Encyclopedia
''Academic American Encyclopedia'' is a 21-volume general English-language encyclopedia published in 1980. It was first produced by Arête Publishing, the American subsidiary of the Dutch publishing company VNU'' Kister's Best Encyclopedias'', 199 ...
'' published by
Grolier
Grolier was one of the largest American publishers of general encyclopedias, including '' The Book of Knowledge'' (1910), ''The New Book of Knowledge'' (1966), ''The New Book of Popular Science'' (1972), ''Encyclopedia Americana'' (1945), ''Acad ...
), but did not launch ''Britannica CD'' until 1994, a year after Microsoft launched their ''Encarta'' encyclopedia. McHenry believes these failures were due to a reluctance among senior management to fully embrace the new technology, caused largely by the overriding influence of the sales staff and management. The sales personnel earned commissions from door-to-door selling of the print encyclopedias, which McHenry believes led to decisions about the distribution and pricing of the electronic products being driven by the desires of the sales personnel rather than market conditions and customer expectations.
After ending publication of its print edition, which at the end supplied only 1% of the company's revenue,
it hoped to transition to a CD or online version. Sales of both of these were disappointing — competition with
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 ...
is mentioned.
[ Sales of the CD/DVD ended with the 2015 " Ultimate Reference Suite".
]
References
External links
''New York Times'' article describing the Britannica's financial woes in 1995
Retrenching from web in 2001, return to book form
Complete hypertext of the Fourth edition
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 ...
Free access and download of the Scribner's 9th Edition
* 9th and 10th edition
1902encyclopedia.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:History of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
History
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, History
Encyclopedism