Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a British-American
company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
known for publishing 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 time ...
'', the world's oldest continuously published
encyclopaedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
, as well as extensive digital efforts—including text and audiovisual—that are aimed at educational tools for primary and secondary schools, and for everyday learners accessing information through online search. In 2012, after 244 years, Britannica ended the print editions, with the 32 volumes of the 2010 encyclopædia being the last to be printed in the traditional hard-bound volumes. By the time the company had stopped publishing the print editions, printed sales only represented about 1% of their business. Since then, Britannica has published the encyclopedia exclusively online.


History


Founding years

The company was founded in
Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
, Scotland, in the 18th century, during the historical period termed the
Scottish Enlightenment The Scottish Enlightenment ( sco, Scots Enlichtenment, gd, Soillseachadh na h-Alba) was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century ...
.
Colin Macfarquhar Colin Macfarquhar (1744 or 1745? – 2 April 1793 or May 1793, Edinburgh?, Scotland) was a Scottish bookseller and printer who is most known for co-founding ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' with Andrew Bell, first published in December 1768. The da ...
and Andrew Bell began the first edition in 1768. The pair engaged William Smellie, who produced most of the articles in the first edition. The second edition was published in 1784. After Macfarquhar's death in 1793, Bell became its sole proprietor and published the third and fourth editions.
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 ...
, an Edinburgh publisher, published the fifth and sixth editions. When Constable died in 1827, A & C Black Ltd. bought the copyrights to the encyclopædia at auction, and they published it for the next 70 years. Beginning with the ninth edition in 1875, the range of topics were expanded by bringing in contributors from the literary field, social sciences and the scientific community. The ninth edition has since been acknowledged as one of the most impressive collections of scholarship ever produced. In 1901, Horace E. Hooper and Walter M. Jackson purchased all copyrights to the encyclopædia. Hooper and Jackson formed companies in both the United States and England.
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), ...
became the editor for the tenth, eleventh and twelfth editions.


Sears Roebuck ownership

In 1915, Sears agreed to market a new and less expensive version of the eleventh edition for middle-class buyers. In 1920, Sears bought Britannica outright, and after only three years of operation, Sears reported a loss of $1.8 million. In 1923, they sold the company back to the widow of Hooper (who had died in 1922) and her brother William Cox. They published the twelfth and thirteenth editions in 1922 and 1926. After Cox failed to raise the money needed to publish the fourteenth edition, Sears ended up financing it, and resumed ownership of Britannica in 1928. In 1932, Sears restructured Britannica, ending sales through their outlets, opting instead for a network of sales representatives who went
door-to-door Door-to-door is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, evangelism or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a p ...
, and staffing booths at conventions and shopping centres. In 1938, Britannica began publishing a yearly synopsis of world events, called the ''Britannica Book of the Year''.


Benton family ownership

In 1941, Britannica was gifted to the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
by Sears. However, the university didn't believe they could manage the company. William Benton, then vice president of the university, offered to put up the operating capital to protect the university against any losses. Benton bought two‐thirds of the stock, and subsequently bought the remaining third. In 1952, Benton started preparations for the fifteenth edition. Britannica acquired
Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...
in 1964 and
Compton's Encyclopedia ''Compton's Encyclopedia and Fact-Index'' is a home and school encyclopedia first published in 1922 as ''Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia''. The word "Pictured" was removed from the title with the 1968 edition.Encyclopædia Britannica, 1988. The en ...
as well in the early 1960s. Benton died in 1973, before the fifteenth edition was published in 1974. The newly titled ''Britannica 3'' was composed of a ten-volume
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 ...
, a 19-volume
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 ...
and a one-volume guide to the encyclopædia's use, called
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 ...
. In 1985, a two-volume index was added, as well as other refinements. Robert P. Gwinn succeeded Benton as publisher and chairman of Britannica in 1974. He divided the company's operations into Britannica USA and Britannica International. In 1990, nearly 120,000 encyclopædias were sold in the United States, with sales for the year rising to $650 million. By 1994, sales had slumped to $453 million, with only 51,000 sets being sold in the US. Sales continued to decline after 1994, finally forcing the company to close more than 70 percent of its sales offices.


Safra ownership

In 1996, Britannica was sold to an investment group led by Jacob E. Safra, a Switzerland-based financier. He restructured the company, laying off more than 120 people including many of the company's top employees. Safra also dissolved the home sales force, with an additional 140 losing their jobs, along with 300 independent contractors. In 1999, they launched Britannica.com, which contained the complete Encyclopædia Britannica. The website repeatedly crashed on its opening day, due to an estimated ten million users attempting to access the site. After several days of continued problems it was shut down, and restarted a few weeks later with upgraded capacity. Britannica.com laid off 20 percent of its work force one year later. In 2009, Britannica Global Edition was printed with 30 volumes. It contained over 40,000 articles and 8,500 photographs. In 2012, after 244 years, Britannica ended the print editions, with the 32 volumes of the 2010 installment being the last on paper; future editions have been published exclusively online since. In 2018, the company released Britannica Insights, an extension for the
Chrome web browser Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macO ...
. The extension supplements Google's featured snippets with accurate information. In 2019, in a partnership with Binumi, Britannica released a video product that gives schools the opportunity to use millions of royalty-free multimedia clips to create digital storytelling projects about content they are already teaching. In 2020, Encyclopædia Britannica released the ''Britannica All New Children's Encyclopedia: What We Know and What We Don't'', an encyclopedia aimed primarily at younger readers, covering major topics. The encyclopedia was widely praised for bringing back the print format. It was ''Britannica'''s first encyclopedia for children since 1984. ProCon.org was acquired by Encyclopædia Britannica in 2020.


See also

*
Encyclopædia Britannica First Edition The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' First Edition (1768–1771) is a 3-volume reference work, an edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's earliest period as a two-man operation founded by Colin Macfarq ...
* Encyclopædia Britannica Second Edition *
Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Third Edition (1797) is an 18-volume reference work, an edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. It was developed during the encyclopedia's earliest period as a two-man operation initiated by Colin Macfarquhar ...
*
Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. So ...
*
Encyclopædia Britannica Films Encyclopædia Britannica Films (also named EB Films for short) was the top producer and distributor of educational 16 mm films and later VHS videocassettes for schools and libraries from the 1940s through the 1990s (by which time the internet ...
*
Encyclopædia Britannica Online An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article ...
*
Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite ''Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite'' is an encyclopaedia based on the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. It was published between 2003 and 2015. Product description The DVD contain ...
*
Lists of encyclopedias For lists of encyclopedias, see: * List of encyclopedias by branch of knowledge * List of encyclopedias by date * List of encyclopedias by language * List of online encyclopedias See also * Bibliography of encyclopedias * List of almanacs * List ...
*
List of encyclopedias by date This is a list of encyclopedias, arranged by time period. For other arrangements, see Lists of encyclopedias. Encyclopedias before 1700 * ''Nine Books of Disciplines'' by Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BC-27 BC) * ''Naturalis Historia'' by Pliny the ...
*
List of online encyclopedias This is a list of well-known online encyclopedias—i.e., encyclopedias accessible or formerly accessible on the Internet. The largest online encyclopedias are general reference works, though there are also many specialized ones. Some online ency ...


Notes


References


Further reading

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External links


Company website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Encyclopædia Britannica Book publishing companies of Scotland 1768 establishments in Scotland Companies based in Chicago Book publishing companies based in Illinois Companies based in Edinburgh History of Edinburgh British companies established in 1768 Publishing companies established in the 1760s Reference publishers 1996 mergers and acquisitions