Encyclopædia Britannica

The Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelled with æ, the ae-ligature) was first published in 1768–1771 as Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan. The Britannica was an important early English-language general encyclopedia and is still regarded as one of the most important reference books in the English language. It is published today by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., a privately-held company.

From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, the Britannica's articles were often judged by many as the foremost authority on a topic, and sometimes included new research or theory intended for a scholarly audience. During this era, the Britannica gained its reputation and had a unique position in English-speaking culture.

The role of the encyclopedia changed substantially in the early 20th century, and this is reflected in the editions of the Britannica from the eleventh edition onward. Encyclopedias have become a general reference used by a wide audience, with shorter, more readable articles. They no longer serve as the primary authoritative reference on a topic; in the modern era, a wide range of academic journals, textbooks, specialized publications and electronic resources have displaced the encyclopedia.

Today the Britannica has evolved primarily into electronic versions available on CD-ROM and via the World Wide Web. It has survived fierce competition from an ever-increasing number of alternative information sources. The articles in the Britannica are commonly considered accurate, reliable, and well-written, and it continues to be widely consulted as a work of general reference.

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History

A product of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Britannica was originally published in Edinburgh in the second-half of the 18th century. The first Britannica was the brainchild of the Scots Colin Macfarquhar, a bookseller and printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver, who published the reference work pseudonymously as a "Society of Gentlemen." The editor was scholar William Smellie, then twenty-eight years old, who was offered £200 to produce the Encyclopaedia in 100 parts and three volumes. The first part appeared in December 1768, priced six pence. By 1771, the Encyclopedia was complete with 2,391 pages and 160 engraved illustrations, and an estimated 3,000 copies were sold.

It was compiled, as the title-page says, on a new plan. The different sciences and arts were "digested into distinct treatises or systems," of which there are 45 with cross headings, that is, titles printed across the page, and about 30 other articles more than three pages long. The longest are "Anatomy," 166 pages, and "Surgery," 238 pages. "The various technical terms, etc., are explained as they occur in the order of the alphabet." "Instead of dismembering the sciences, by attempting to treat them intelligibly under a multitude of technical terms, they have digested the principles of every science in the form of systems or distinct treatises, and explained the terms as they occur in the order of the alphabet, with references to the sciences to which they belong." This plan, as the compilers say, differs from that of all the previous dictionaries of arts and sciences. Its merit and novelty consist in… on the one hand keeping important subjects together, and on the other facilitating reference by numerous separate articles.<ref name="online encylopedia">Quoted from: Online Encyclopedia article on encyclopaedia</ref>

Owing to the success of the first edition, a more ambitious second edition followed. This time Smellie declined as editor, and Macfarquhar took over the role himself, aided by James Tytler. The second edition was eventually published 1777–1784 in ten volumes with 8,595 pages.

The plan of the work was enlarged by the addition of history and biography, which encyclopaedias in general had long omitted. "From the time of the second edition of this work, every cyclopaedia of note, in England and elsewhere, has been a cyclopaedia, not solely of arts and sciences, but of the whole wide circle of general learning and miscellaneous information " (Quarterly Review, cxiii. 362).<ref name="online encylopedia"/>

However, it was the third edition, published 1788–1797 and edited by Macfarquhar and after his death by George Gleig, which finally realized the encyclopedic vision. Not only broader in scope, with 18 volumes plus a two volume supplement totalling over 16,000 pages, the third edition was also the first to include articles written specifically for the Britannica by experts and academics, many recruited by Gleig. The third edition established the foundation of the Britannica as an important, and in many cases the definitive, reference on many topics for much of the next century.

In general, the major articles in the editions through the tenth edition were far longer and more scholarly than the articles in modern encyclopedias. For an example, see ELIOHS' online version of the article History from the third edition (in the external links section below). Nineteenth century editions of the Britannica regularly included notable new or major works from its authors.

The extraordinary French Encyclopédie is widely considered to have inspired the publication of the Britannica. But unlike the Encyclopédie, the Britannica was an extremely conservative publication. Later editions were usually dedicated to the reigning monarch. In dedicating the supplement to the third edition to the King, Gleig wrote,

The French Encyclopédie had been accused, and justly accused, of having disseminated far and wide the seeds of anarchy and atheism. If the Encyclopaedia Britannica shall in any degree counteract the tendency of that pestiferous work, even these two volumes will not be wholly unworthy of your Majesty's attention.<ref name="online encylopedia"/>

Archibald Constable was involved in the publication to varying degrees from 1788 and after Macfarquhar's death in 1793. In 1812 he acquired the Britannica from its trustees, and published the Britannica through 1826. The fourth through sixth editions, and the supplement to them, included works by a number of highly-regarded Scottish and English authors and scientists: William Hazlitt, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Walter Scott, and Thomas Young, whose article on Egypt included the translation of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone.

In the late 1820s, rights to the Britannica were acquired by the Edinburgh publishing firm of Adam & Charles Black, who published the seventh and eighth editions, and included new chapters, such as 'Architecture' by William Hosking. The landmark ninth edition, often called the Scholar's edition, was published from 1875 to 1889. The ninth edition included numerous in-depth, scholarly articles by pre-eminent authors, and therefore is considered by some to mark the high point in the history of English-language encyclopedias.

A & C Black moved to London in 1895. The Britannica later became associated with The Times newspaper, and was sold in 1901. The tenth edition of eleven volumes including map and index volumes was issued in effect as a large supplement to the ninth edition. The American Horace Everett Hooper was publisher from 1897 to 1922. From 1909, and for the eleventh edition, the publication became associated with the University of Cambridge, in England.

The substantially rewritten eleventh edition of 1910–1911 is also a classic edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, but reflected the new goals of its new owners. The edition balances scholarly accuracy and scope with a readability intended to gain a wider audience and increased sales, using less lengthy but still thorough articles. Sometimes called the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, this edition is available in the public domain. The 11th edition was the first edition to be published substantially at one time, instead of volume by volume. The complete text is online free.

The trademark and publication rights were sold after the 11th edition to Sears Roebuck and it moved to Chicago, Illinois, United States. The 12th and 13th editions each took the form of a three volume supplement or update, meant to be used in conjunction with the 11th edition. The 14th edition of 1929 marked a major shift, with fewer volumes and shorter articles, meant to be more accessible as a reference to a wider range of readers. However, the 14th edition was criticised by priest-turned-atheist Joseph McCabe, who claimed that it had been stripped of unfavourable content about the Catholic Church.<ref>McCabe, Joseph. Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica: How Powerful and Shameless Clerical Forces Castrated a Famous Work....</ref>

Sears Roebuck offered the rights to the Britannica as a gift to the University of Chicago in 1941. William Benton figured as publisher from 1943 to his death in 1973, followed by his widow Helen Hemingway Benton until her own death in 1974.

In January 1996, the Britannica was purchased by billionaire Swiss financier Jacob Safra.

In October 2002, Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs set out to read all 33,000 pages of the Britannica. He chronicled this quest for knowledge in the 2004 book The Know-It-All (see References below for full citation).

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CD-ROM edition and Britannica Online

In the 1980s, Microsoft approached Britannica Inc. to collaborate on a CD-ROM encyclopedia. Britannica Inc., feeling that they had control of the market and showing strong profits (sales of the complete Britannica were priced between US$1,500 and US$2,200), turned Microsoft down. Britannica Inc.'s senior management viewed their product as a luxury brand with an impeccable reputation handed down from generation to generation. They did not believe that a CD-ROM could adequately compete or supplement their business. In turn, Microsoft used content from Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia to create what is now known as Encarta.

In 1990, the Britannica's sales reached all-time high of US$650 million. But Encarta, released in 1993, became a staple software with every computer purchase and the Britannica's market share plummeted. Britannica Inc. countered by offering a CD-ROM version of their product, although a CD-ROM could not generate US$500 to US$600 in sales commissions as the print version did. Britannica Inc. decided on charging $995 for customers looking to purchase only the CD-ROM while at the same time bundling a free disc with the print version. Britannica Inc. hoped that including the CD-ROM would entice buyers to stay with the brand.

In 1994, Britannica Inc. launched an online version of their encyclopedia, with subscriptions for sale for US$2000. By 1996, the cost of the CD-ROM had dropped to US$200. Sales had plummeted to US$325 million - about half their 1990 levels. Only 55,000 hard copy versions were sold in 1994, compared with 117,000 in 1990, and sales later fell to 20,000<ref>"Sales plummeted from 100,000 a year to just 20,000." Encyclopaedia Britannica changes to survive</ref>. By the end of 1996, Britannica Inc. was in serious trouble and was purchased by Swiss financier Jacob Safra for a fraction of its book value - a mere US$135 million. Since then Safra has introduced massive price-cutting measures in an effort to compete with Encarta, even offering the entire reference free of charge for a time (around 18 months, from October 1999 to March 2001) on the internet.

Former editor-in-chief Robert McHenry believes that Britannica failed to exploit its early advantages in the market for electronic encyclopedias. Britannica had, for example, published the first multimedia encyclopedia (Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia) as early as 1989, but did not launch Britannica CD until 1994, one year after Microsoft launched their Encarta encyclopedia. McHenry believes these failures were due to a reluctance amongst senior management to fully embrace new technology, caused largely by the overriding influence of the sales staff and management. The sales personnel earned commissions from door-to-door selling of the print 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.<ref name="EBonline"> The Building of Britannica Online. howtoknow.com. URL accessed on 2005-12-30.</ref>

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Competition

Today, one of the biggest challenges to the Britannica is the ease with which people can find information online. Many people simply prefer to find information with the help of a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo! or Ask.com. While the information available on the internet is typically not as structured and well-vetted as that contained in Britannica, this is (partially) compensated for by convenience and the sheer volume of information typically available on any subject. Smart searching algorithms, such as page rank algorithm used by Google, also assists a smart user to quickly narrow down their investigation to relevant pages.

Online alternatives to the Britannica include Wikipedia, a Web-based free-content encyclopedia. Wikipedia is free to use; although the print and electronic versions of Britannica are available at libraries for checkout (either directly or through ILL) and can be accessed from home using some library web sites, in addition to being available for purchase.

Substantive comparisons between the Britannica and Wikipedia may be hard to draw. The journal Nature reported on December 14, 2005 that science articles in Wikipedia were comparable in accuracy to those in the Britannica <ref>Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a</ref>. However, Nature's study has been attacked by Britannica, Inc. as flawed and misleading. <ref>Britannica: Fatally Flawed (PDF)</ref>. As Nature has recently responded in turn, the controversy is still active.<ref>Nature: Encyclopedia Britannica: a response (PDF)</ref>

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Current version

Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. now owns a trademark on the word "Britannica." As of 2004, the most complete version of Encyclopædia Britannica contains about 120,000 articles, with 55 million words, and a comprehensive index, the first of its kind for a major encyclopedia. It is published in paper form (31,550 pages in 32 volumes containing 65,000 articles, list price US$1400), online (120,000 articles, brief summaries of articles can be viewed for free, and the full text is available for US$11.95 per month or US$69.95 per year for individual subscribers), and on CD-ROM (more than 80,000 articles, US$30) or DVD-ROM (more than 100,000 articles, US$50). The single-volume Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, consisting of 28,000 articles, is sold as a reference to the Encyclopædia Britannica. Since 1938 Britannica has published annually a "Book of the Year" chronicling the past year's events, also available online back to the 1994 edition (covering the events of 1993).

The current version of Britannica was written by over 4,000 contributors, including noted scholars such as Milton Friedman, Carl Sagan, and Michael DeBakey. Under the influence of the director of planning, Mortimer Adler, the 15th edition, first published in 1974 and frequently reissued since, was published not as one alphabetical sequence of volumes as previously but in three parts that covered topics in different degrees of depth: a one-volume Propædia that provides a structured hierarchy to all the information in the set, a 10-volume Micropædia which contains short articles, a 19-volume Macropædia for longer articles. A two-volume index was added in 1985. Thirty-five percent of the content of the encyclopedia has been re-written within the last two years.

Dale Hoiberg, a sinologist, is the publication's current editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors were Hugh Chisholm (1903–1913, 1920–1924), James Louis Garvin (1926–1932), Franklin Henry Hooper (1932–1938), Walter Yust (1938–1960), Harry S. Ashmore (1960–1963), Warren E. Preece (1964–1975), and Robert McHenry (1992–1997). Ted Pappas is the current executive editor. Earlier holders of that position were John V. Dodge (1950–1964) and Philip W. Goetz. Don Yannias, former CEO of the company when it was in financial difficulties, serves on Britannica's Board of Directors.

Among the members of an international editorial council planning a new (16th) edition are such notable figures as biologist David Baltimore, cognitive scientist Donald Norman, economist Amartya Sen, philosopher Thomas Nagel, and former Ecuadorian president Rosalía Arteaga.

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Edition history

Edition Published Size Editor(s)
1st 1768–1771 3 vol. William Smellie
2nd 1777–1784 10 vol. James Tytler
3rd 1788–1797, 1801 sup. 18 vol. + 2 sup. Colin Macfarquhar and George Gleig
4th 1801–1809 20 vol. James Millar
5th 1815 20 vol. James Millar and Thomas Bonar
6th 1820–1823, 1815–1824 sup. 20 vol. + 6 sup. 1 Charles Maclaren and Macvey Napier
7th 1830–1842 21 vol. Macvey Napier
8th 1853–1860 22 vol. 2 Thomas Stewart Traill
9th 1875–1889 25 vol. 3 Thomas Spencer Baynes (to 1880, then W. Robertson Smith)
10th 1902–1903 9th ed. + 11 sup 4 Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, Hugh Chisholm, and Arthur T. Hadley with Franklin H. Hooper
11th 1910–1911 29 vol Hugh Chisholm
12th 1921–1922 11th ed. + 3 sup. 5 Hugh Chisholm
13th 1926 11th ed. + 3 sup. 6 James Louis Garvin
14th 1929–1973 24 vol. 7 James Louis Garvin with Franklin Henry Hooper
15th 1974–1984 30 vol. 8 Mortimer J. Adler, William Benton, and Charles E. Swanson
1985– 32 vol. 9
Edition notes

vol. = volume, sup. = supplement

1 Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. With preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences.

2 8th to 14th editions included a separate index volume.

3 9th ed. featured articles by notables of the day, such as James Maxwell on electricity and magnetism, and William Thomson (who became Lord Kelvin) on heat.

4 10th ed. included a maps volume and a cumulative index volume for the 9th and 10th edition volumes: the new volumes, constituting, in combination with the existing volumes of the 9th ed., the 10th ed. ... and also supplying a new, distinctive, and independent library of reference dealing with recent events and developments

5 Vols. 30-32 ... the New volumes constituting, in combination with the twenty-nine volumes of the eleventh edition, the twelfth edition

6 This supplement replaced the previous supplement: The three new supplementary volumes constituting, with the volumes of the latest standard edition, the thirteenth edition.

7 This edition was the first to be kept up to date by continual (usually annual) revision.

8 The 15th edition (introduced as "Britannica 3") was published as multiple sets: the 10-volume Micropædia (containing short articles and served as an index), the 19-volume Macropædia, plus the Propædia (see text).

9 In 1985 the system was modified by removing the index function from the Micropædia and adding a separate two-volume index; the Macropædia articles were further consolidated into fewer, larger ones (for example, the previously separate articles about the 50 U.S. states were all included into the "United States of America" article), with some medium-length articles moved to the Micropædia.

The first CD-ROM edition was issued in 1994. At that time also an online version was offered for paid subscription. In 1999 this was offered for free, and no revised print versions appeared. The experiment was ended, however, in 2001 and a new printed set was issued in 2002.

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Notes

<references/>

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References

  • Herman Kogan, The Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)
  • H. Einbinder, The Myth of the Britannica (New York: Grove Press, 1964)
  • A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All : One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004)
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See also

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External links

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