History of the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopedia
The Encyclopædia Britannica
has been published continuously since 1768, appearing in 15 official editions. Several editions have been amended with multi-volume "supplements" (3rd–6th) or undergone drastic re-organizations (15th). In recent years, digital versions of the Britannica have been developed, both online and on optical media. Since the early 1930s, the Britannica has developed several "spin-off" products to leverage its reputation as a reliable reference work and educational tool.
and the Natural History of Pliny the Elder
, the latter having 2493 articles in 37 books. Encyclopedias were published in Europe and China throughout the Middle Ages
, such as the delightful Satyricon of Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (early 5th century), the Speculum majus (The Great Mirror) of Vincent of Beauvais
(1250), and Encyclopedia septem tomis distincta (A Seven-Part Encyclopedia) by Johann Heinrich Alsted
(1630). Most early encyclopedias did not include biographies of living people and were written in Latin, although some encyclopedias were translated into English, such as De proprietatibus rerum (On the properties of things) (1240) by Bartholomeus Anglicus. 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
. Ephraim Chambers
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
, who argued that death alone should not render people notable.
1st edition
The Britannica was the idea of Colin Macfarquhar
, a bookseller and printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver, both of Edinburgh
. They conceived of the Britannica as a conservative reaction to the French Encyclopédie
of Denis Diderot
(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
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
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 December 6, 1768 in Edinburgh, priced sixpence
or 8 pence on finer paper. The Britannica was published under the pseudonym
"A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", possibly referring to the many gentlemen who had bought subscriptions. By releasing the numbers in weekly installments, the Britannica was completed in 1771, having 2,391 pages. The numbers were bound in three equally sized volumes covering Aa–Bzo, Caaba–Lythrum, and Macao–Zyglophyllum; an estimated 3,000 sets were eventually sold, priced at 12 pounds sterling apiece.
The 1st edition
also featured 160 beautiful copperplate illustrations engraved by Bell. Some illustrations were shocking to some readers, such as the three pages depicting female pelvises and fetuses in the midwifery article; King George III
commanded that these pages be ripped from every copy.
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
, although Smellie
claimed it as his own invention.
Smellie wrote most of the first edition, borrowing liberally from the authors of his era, including Voltaire
, Benjamin Franklin
, Alexander Pope
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". 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.
2nd edition
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 Holyrood Palace, a debtors' prison, 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
' 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
error caused page 8000 to follow page 7099. All the maps of this edition are found in a single 195-page article, "Geography
".
The second edition improved greatly upon the 1st, but is still notable for the large amount of archaic information it contains. 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. Tytler also describes the architecture of Noah's Ark
in detail (illustrated with a copperplate engraving) and, following Bishop Ussher
, includes a remarkably precise chronology for the Earth
, beginning with its creation on 23 October 4004 B.C. and noting that the Great Flood of 2348 B.C. lasted for exactly 777 days. The 2nd edition also reports a cure for tuberculosis
:
and a somewhat melancholy article on "Love
" 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
. 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
are outlined concisely by Tytler in the article "Colonies" thus:
At the end of volume 10 is a 200-page addendum (page 8996 to 9195) entitled "Appendix containing articles omitted and others further explained or improved, together with corrections of errors and of wrong references."
was published from 1788 to 1797 in 300 weekly numbers (1 shilling apiece); these numbers were collected and bound in 30 parts (10 shilling, sixpence each) and finally in 18 volumes with 14,579 pages and 542 plates. 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
, later Bishop Gleig of Brechin (consecrated 30 October 1808). Andrew Bell, Macfarquhar's partner, bought the rights to the Britannica from his 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, who introduced the first usage of chemical symbols in the 1801 supplement (see below), and John Robison
, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, who wrote several well-regarded articles on natural philosophy
. 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
; calling him "the Father of Your People, and enlightened Patron of Arts, Sciences and Literature", Gleig wished
The 3rd edition
is also famous for its bold article on "Motion", which erroneously rejects Isaac Newton
'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. 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
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. Piracy of the Britannica in America remained a problem through the 9th edition (1889). Pirated 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.
In 1797, Fath Ali Shah was given a complete set of the Britannicas 3rd edition, which he read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopædia Britannica."
Supplement to the 3rd edition
A two-volume supplement to the 3rd edition was published in 1801, having 1,624 pages and 50 copperplates by D. Lizars. 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).
The Britannica explicitly positioned itself as a conservative publication in reaction to the radical French Encyclopédie
of Diderot published between 1751-66. In the royal dedication penned on 10 December 1800, Dr. Gleig elaborated on the editorial purpose of the Britannica
The copyright of the material in the supplement to the 3rd edition was owned by Thomas Bonar
, who asked 20,000 pounds sterling for it. The supplemental material was licensed for the fourth edition for 100 pounds, but this copyright issue remained a problem through the 5th edition.
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.
, 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.
This supplement had remarkably illustrious contributors. Constable was friends with Sir Walter Scott
, who contributed the "Chivalry" article. To edit the supplement, Constable hired Macvey Napier
, who recruited other eminent contributors such as Sir Humphry Davy
, Jean-Baptiste Biot
, John Stuart Mill
, William Hazlitt
, David Ricardo
, and Thomas Malthus
. Thomas Young's
article on Egypt
included the translation of the hieroglyphics
on the Rosetta Stone
.
. 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
by a partnership of four men: Adam Black (a publisher), Alexander Wight (a banker), Abram Thomson (a bookbinder) and Thomas Allen, the proprietor of the Caledonian Mercury
. Not long after, Black bought out his partners and ownership of the Britannica passed to the Edinburgh publishing firm of A & C Black
.
The 7th edition was begun in 1827 and published from March 1830-January 1842. It was edited by Macvey Napier
, who was assisted by James Browne, LLD. It consisted of 21 volumes with 17,101 pages and 506 plates, with an Index of 187 pages. This was the first edition to include a general index for all articles, a practice that was maintained until 1974.
Many illustrious contributors were recruited to this edition, including Sir David Brewster
, Thomas de Quincey
, Antonio Panizzi and Robert Stephenson
. James Wilson
did all of zoology
, Dr. Hampden did all of Greek philosophy, and William Hosking
contributed an excellent article on architecture
. Mathematical diagrams were made from woodcuts.
The 7th edition 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.
died in 1847, Adam Black selected for its editor Dr. Thomas Stewart Traill
, 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).
Many long articles were carried over from the 7th edition, but new articles by illustrious contributors were added. In all, there were 344 contributors, including Lord Macaulay, Charles Kingsley
, Robert Chambers, the Rev. Charles Merivale
, Dr. Joseph Dalton Hooker
, Baron Robert Bunsen
, Sir John Herschel
, Professors Richard Owen
, John Stuart Blackie
and William Thomson
(Lord Kelvin). This edition also featured the first American contributor to the Britannica, Edward Everett
, who wrote a 40,000-word hagiographic biography of George Washington
— 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 Edinburgh, and was the first contributor to the Britannica who addressed the historical interpretation of the Bible
, 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, Lord Rayleigh
, Algernon Charles Swinburne
and William Michael Rossetti
. Robert Louis Stevenson
, then 25, contributed an article about Robert Burns
that, being unenthusiastic, was never printed. There were roughly 1100 contributors altogether, a handful of which were women; this edition was also the first to include a significant article about women ("Women, Law Relating to").
The 9th edition was a critical success, and roughly 8,500 sets were sold in Britain. A & C Black
authorized two American firms, Charles Scribner's Sons
and Little, Brown and Company
, to distribute the Britannica in the United States, and roughly 45,000 sets were sold. However, several hundred thousand pirated copies were also sold in the U.S., which still did not have copyright laws protecting foreign publications. Famous pirates of that era include the Philadelphian 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 pirate 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 alleged pirates of the 9th edition included John Wanamaker
and the Reverend Isaac Kaufmann Funk
of the Funk and Wagnalls
encyclopedia. Richard S. Pearle & Co. of Chicago printed some sets in 1891, with 24 volumes plus an index Vol. 25, and in 1893 added 3 "American" volumes 25-27 with the index as Vol. 28. Some copies of this version say they were printed by Werner, also of Chicago, and in 1907 Werner printed the commonly found "New Werner Edition." In 1890, James Clarke published the Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica, Revised and Amended.
However, in 1896, Scribner's obtained court orders to shut down the pirate operations, whose printing plates were melted down as part of the enforcement.
In 1903, Saalfield Publishing
published the Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica
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.
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
has been printed, and to pay D. Appleton & Co. the sum of $2000 damages."
Horace Everett Hooper
was an American business man, and a close associate of James Clarke, one of the leading American pirates. Hooper recognized the potential profit in the Britannica and, again in 1896, learned that both the Britannica and The Times of London were in financial straits. Hooper formed a partnership with Clarke, his brother George Clarke, and Walter Montgomery Jackson
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 modern British critic has written
, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace
, Arthur T. Hadley and Franklin Henry Hooper
, the brother of the owner Horace Hooper. 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, and beginning to show their age. This led to the popular joke: "The Times is behind the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Encyclopædia Britannica is behind the times."
The 1903 advertising campaign for the 10th edition was an onslaught of direct marketing
: 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 pounds 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."
in London and by Franklin 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-Powell
writing on kite-flying
; Arthur Eddington on astronomy; Edmund Gosse
on literature
and Donald Tovey 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 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
, 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 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, Hooper managed to secure Cambridge University as a new sponsor; thus, the 11th edition was published initially by Cambridge University Press
, 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 and Co. of Chicago
, who issued a physically smaller but complete version. The owner of Sears, philanthropist Julius Rosenwald
, 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' smaller 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.
. Luckily, the CEO
of Sears Roebuck, philanthropist
Julius Rosenwald
, was devoted to the mission of the Britannica and bought its rights on 24 February 1920 from his friend Horace Everett Hooper
for $1.25 million dollars. The Britannica's headquarters were moved to Chicago
, where they have remained ever since. In 1922, a 3-volume supplement to the 11th edition was released that summarized the developments just before, during and after World War I; these three volumes, taken together with the 11th edition, became known as the 12th edition. Horace Hooper died in 1922, a few weeks after the publication of the 12th edition. This edition was a commercial failure, losing Sears roughly $1.75 million dollars, after which Sears gave it back to Hooper's widow, Harriett Meeker Cox, and her brother, William J. Cox, who ran the company from 1923-1928.
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 12th edition. Again taken together with the 11th edition, the new volumes became known as the 13th edition, which maintained the Britannica's tradition of illustrious contributors: Harry Houdini
, Albert Einstein
, Marie Curie
, Sigmund Freud
, Henry Ford
, Leon Trotsky
, Ferdinand Foch
, Gustav Stresemann
, 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 14th edition, pointing out that the 11th edition (the bulk of the 12 and 13th editions) was badly out of date. Cox also tried to involve the University of Chicago
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.
in New York
. The 14th edition took three years to complete, at the then exorbitant cost of $2.5 million dollars, all of it invested by Julius Rosenwald
of Sears, Roebuck and Company
. 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
. Nevertheless, the 14th also included many illustrious contributors, including eighteen Nobel laureates
in science, such as Robert Millikan
, Albert Abraham Michelson
and Arthur Compton
. More coverage was given to popular entertainment, with Gene Tunney
writing on boxing
, Lillian Gish
on acting
and Irene Castle on ballroom dancing. George Bernard Shaw
contributed a well-regarded article on socialism
. In all, there were roughly 3500 named contributors, of which roughly half were American. The 14th edition was again criticized for sexism
; for example, less than 6% of its 13,000 biographies were of women
.
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 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.
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" continues to be published even today. 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 Ten Eventful Years, a summary of the national and international events surrounding World War II (1937–1946).
. The story of this offer was recounted at the bicentennial banquet
of the Encyclopædia Britannica
The University of Chicago
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. After their deaths, the Benton Foundation
continued to manage the Britannica until it was sold to Jacqui Safra in 1996.
Harvey Einbinder
, culminating in his highly critical 390-page book, The Myth of Britannica (1964). 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 dollars 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 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
's grand conception of epistemology. Thus, the Propædia was intended to be the road-map of all knowledge, within which every fact, technique, and theory could be organized.
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.
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
s were merged into what became a 310-page article "United States of America". The Macropædia
was also restricted somewhat from 19 volumes to the present 17 volumes. At the same time, the number of Micropædia
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
, which almost fills one page. Finally, the Propædia
s Outline of Knowledge was simplified for easier use.
approached Britannica Inc. 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
.
In 1990 the Britannica's sales reached an all-time high of $650 million, but Encarta, released in 1993, soon became a software staple with almost every computer purchase and the Britannica's market share plummeted. Britannica Inc. 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 Inc. 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 Inc. was bought in 1996 by Swiss financier Jacob Safra
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
.
Currently, Britannica co-operates with Taiwan
companies (遠流/智慧藏學習科技公司) to provide a Traditional Chinese-English bilingual version encyclopedia on internet according to the 2002 edition. It is the first bilingual product of Britannica.
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 second multimedia
encyclopedia titled Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia
as early as 1989 (the first one being the Academic American Encyclopedia
published by Grolier), 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.
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
has been published continuously since 1768, appearing in 15 official editions. Several editions have been amended with multi-volume "supplements" (3rd–6th) or undergone drastic re-organizations (15th). In recent years, digital versions of the Britannica have been developed, both online and on optical media. Since the early 1930s, the Britannica has developed several "spin-off" products to leverage its reputation as a reliable reference work and educational tool.
Historical context
Encyclopedias of various types had been published since antiquity, beginning with the collected works of AristotleAristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
and the Natural History of Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, the latter having 2493 articles in 37 books. Encyclopedias were published in Europe and China throughout the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, such as the delightful Satyricon of Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (early 5th century), the Speculum majus (The Great Mirror) of Vincent of Beauvais
Vincent of Beauvais
The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais wrote the Speculum Maius, the main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages.-Early life:...
(1250), and Encyclopedia septem tomis distincta (A Seven-Part Encyclopedia) by Johann Heinrich Alsted
Johann Heinrich Alsted
Johann Heinrich Alsted was a German Calvinist minister and academic, known for his varied interests: in Ramism and Lullism, pedagogy and encyclopedias, theology and millennarianism.-Life:...
(1630). Most early encyclopedias did not include biographies of living people and were written in Latin, although some encyclopedias were translated into English, such as De proprietatibus rerum (On the properties of things) (1240) by Bartholomeus Anglicus. 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
John Harris (writer)
John Harris was an English writer, scientist, and Anglican priest. He is best known as the editor of the Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , the earliest of English encyclopaedias, and as the compiler of the Collection of Voyages and Travels which was...
(two volumes, published 1704 and 1710, respectively), which contained articles by such contributors as Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
. Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.-Early life:...
wrote a very popular two-volume Cyclopedia
Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
Cyclopaedia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the eighteenth century...
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
Johann Heinrich Zedler was a bookseller and publisher. His most important achievement was the creation of a German encyclopedia, the Grosses Universal-Lexicon ,...
, who argued that death alone should not render people notable.
1st editionEncyclopædia Britannica First EditionThe Encyclopædia Britannica First Edition 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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was sold unbound in...
Colin Macfarquhar
Colin Macfarquhar was a Scottish bookseller and printer. He is best known for being one of the "Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", along with Andrew Bell, who first published the Encyclopædia Britannica. Macfarquhar also contributed heavily to the second and third edition...
, a bookseller and printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver, both of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. They conceived of the Britannica as a conservative reaction to the French Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
of Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
(published 1751–1766), which was widely viewed as heretical. Ironically, the Encyclopédie had begun as a French translation of the popular English encyclopedia, Cyclopaedia
Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
Cyclopaedia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the eighteenth century...
published by Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.-Early life:...
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
Scottish Enlightenment
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By 1750, Scots were among the most literate citizens of Europe, with an estimated 75% level of literacy...
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
William Smellie (encyclopedist)
William Smellie was a Scottish master printer, naturalist, antiquary, editor and encyclopedist. He was friends with Robert Burns, whose assessment is engraved on Smellie's tombstone: "Here lies a man who did honour to human nature"...
who was offered 200 pounds sterling
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
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 December 6, 1768 in Edinburgh, priced sixpence
British sixpence coin
The sixpence, known colloquially as the tanner, or half-shilling, was a British pre-decimal coin, worth six pence, or 1/40th of a pound sterling....
or 8 pence on finer paper. The Britannica was published under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", possibly referring to the many gentlemen who had bought subscriptions. By releasing the numbers in weekly installments, the Britannica was completed in 1771, having 2,391 pages. The numbers were bound in three equally sized volumes covering Aa–Bzo, Caaba–Lythrum, and Macao–Zyglophyllum; an estimated 3,000 sets were eventually sold, priced at 12 pounds sterling apiece.
The 1st edition
Encyclopædia Britannica First Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica First Edition 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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was sold unbound in...
also featured 160 beautiful copperplate illustrations engraved by Bell. Some illustrations were shocking to some readers, such as the three pages depicting female pelvises and fetuses in the midwifery article; King George III
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
commanded that these pages be ripped from every copy.
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
Colin Macfarquhar was a Scottish bookseller and printer. He is best known for being one of the "Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", along with Andrew Bell, who first published the Encyclopædia Britannica. Macfarquhar also contributed heavily to the second and third edition...
, although Smellie
William Smellie (encyclopedist)
William Smellie was a Scottish master printer, naturalist, antiquary, editor and encyclopedist. He was friends with Robert Burns, whose assessment is engraved on Smellie's tombstone: "Here lies a man who did honour to human nature"...
claimed it as his own invention.
Smellie wrote most of the first edition, borrowing liberally from the authors of his era, including Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
, Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
and Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
. 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". On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the 1st edition
Bicentennial of the Encyclopædia Britannica
The first two pamphlets of the Encyclopædia Britannica were issued in December 1768, being sold from the printing office of its originator, Colin Macfarquhar, in Nicholson Street in Edinburgh...
, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is an American company best known for publishing the Encyclopædia Britannica, the world's oldest continuously-published encyclopedia.-History:...
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.
2nd editionEncyclopædia Britannica Second EditionThe Encyclopædia Britannica Second Edition is a 10-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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was sold unbound in...
After the success of the first edition, a more ambitious second editionEncyclopædia Britannica Second Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica Second Edition is a 10-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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was sold unbound in...
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
James Tytler
James Tytler was a Scottish apothecary and the editor of the second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Tytler became the first person in Britain to steer a hot air balloon ....
, M.A., who was known as an able writer and willing to work for a very low wage. Macfarquhar and Bell rescued Tytler from Holyrood Palace, a debtors' prison, 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
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
' 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
Pagination is the process of dividing information into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages. Today the latter are usually simply instances of the former that have been outputted to a printing device, such as a desktop printer or a modern printing press...
error caused page 8000 to follow page 7099. All the maps of this edition are found in a single 195-page article, "Geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
".
The second edition improved greatly upon the 1st, but is still notable for the large amount of archaic information it contains. 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. Tytler also describes the architecture of Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...
in detail (illustrated with a copperplate engraving) and, following Bishop Ussher
James Ussher
James Ussher was Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625–56...
, includes a remarkably precise chronology for the Earth
Geochronology
Geochronology is the science of determining the age of rocks, fossils, and sediments, within a certain degree of uncertainty inherent to the method used. A variety of dating methods are used by geologists to achieve this, and schemes of classification and terminology have been proposed...
, beginning with its creation on 23 October 4004 B.C. and noting that the Great Flood of 2348 B.C. lasted for exactly 777 days. The 2nd edition also reports a cure for tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
:
and a somewhat melancholy article on "Love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
" 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
Colin Macfarquhar was a Scottish bookseller and printer. He is best known for being one of the "Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", along with Andrew Bell, who first published the Encyclopædia Britannica. Macfarquhar also contributed heavily to the second and third edition...
. 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
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
are outlined concisely by Tytler in the article "Colonies" thus:
At the end of volume 10 is a 200-page addendum (page 8996 to 9195) entitled "Appendix containing articles omitted and others further explained or improved, together with corrections of errors and of wrong references."
3rd edition
The third editionEncyclopædia Britannica Third Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition is an 18-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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland...
was published from 1788 to 1797 in 300 weekly numbers (1 shilling apiece); these numbers were collected and bound in 30 parts (10 shilling, sixpence each) and finally in 18 volumes with 14,579 pages and 542 plates. Macfarquhar
Colin Macfarquhar
Colin Macfarquhar was a Scottish bookseller and printer. He is best known for being one of the "Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", along with Andrew Bell, who first published the Encyclopædia Britannica. Macfarquhar also contributed heavily to the second and third edition...
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
George Gleig was a Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.He was born at Boghall, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a farmer. At the age of thirteen he entered King's College, University of Aberdeen, where the first prize in mathematics and physical and moral sciences fell to him...
, later Bishop Gleig of Brechin (consecrated 30 October 1808). Andrew Bell, Macfarquhar's partner, bought the rights to the Britannica from his 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, who introduced the first usage of chemical symbols in the 1801 supplement (see below), and John Robison
John Robison (physicist)
John Robison FRSE was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh....
, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, who wrote several well-regarded articles on natural philosophy
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
. 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 of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
; calling him "the Father of Your People, and enlightened Patron of Arts, Sciences and Literature", Gleig wished
The 3rd edition
Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition is an 18-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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland...
is also famous for its bold article on "Motion", which erroneously rejects Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
's theory of gravitation
Gravitation
Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped...
. Instead, Dr. Gleig, or more likely, James Tytler
James Tytler
James Tytler was a Scottish apothecary and the editor of the second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Tytler became the first person in Britain to steer a hot air balloon ....
, wrote that gravity is caused by the classical element of fire
Fire (classical element)
Fire has been an important part of all cultures and religions from pre-history to modern day and was vital to the development of civilization. It has been regarded in many different contexts throughout history, but especially as a metaphysical constant of the world.-Greek and Roman tradition:Fire...
. He seems to have been swayed by William Jones
William Jones (ecclesiastic)
William Jones , known as William Jones of Nayland, was a British clergyman and author.-Life:He was born at Lowick, Northamptonshire, but was descended from an old Welsh family. One of his ancestors was Colonel John Jones, brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. He was educated at Charterhouse School...
' Essay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy (1762), which in turn was based on John Hutchinson's
John Hutchinson (writer)
John Hutchinson was an English theological writer.He was born at Spennithorne, Yorkshire, and served as steward in several families of position, latterly in that of the Duke of Somerset, who ultimately obtained for him the post of riding purveyor to the master of the horse, a sinecure worth about...
MA thesis, Moses' Principia, which was written in 1724 but rejected by Oxford University. Nevertheless, Gleig was sanguine about the errors of the 3rd edition, echoing William Smellie
William Smellie (encyclopedist)
William Smellie was a Scottish master printer, naturalist, antiquary, editor and encyclopedist. He was friends with Robert Burns, whose assessment is engraved on Smellie's tombstone: "Here lies a man who did honour to human nature"...
's sentiment in the 1st edition quoted above:
The first "American" encyclopedia, Dobson's Encyclopædia
Dobson's Encyclopædia
Dobson's Encyclopædia was the first encyclopedia published in the newly independent United States of America, by Thomas Dobson from 1789–1798...
, 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
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
law was passed on 30 May 1790 — although anticipated by Section 8 of Article I of the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
(ratified 4 March 1789) — but did not protect foreign publications such as the Britannica. Piracy of the Britannica in America remained a problem through the 9th edition (1889). Pirated 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
In 1797, Fath Ali Shah was given a complete set of the Britannicas 3rd edition, which he read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopædia Britannica."
Supplement to the 3rd editionEncyclopædia Britannica Third EditionThe Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition is an 18-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 Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in Edinburgh, Scotland...
A two-volume supplement to the 3rd edition was published in 1801, having 1,624 pages and 50 copperplates by D. Lizars. This supplement was published by a wine-merchant, Thomas BonarThomas Bonar
Thomson Bonar was a wine-merchant who married the daughter of the engraver Andrew Bell, who co-founded the Encyclopædia Britannica with Colin Macfarquhar....
, 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).
The Britannica explicitly positioned itself as a conservative publication in reaction to the radical French Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
of Diderot published between 1751-66. In the royal dedication penned on 10 December 1800, Dr. Gleig elaborated on the editorial purpose of the Britannica
4th edition
The 4th edition was begun in 1800 and completed in 1810, comprising 20 volumes with 16,033 pages and 531 plates engraved by Andrew Bell. 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 but, overall, the 4th edition was a minor revision of the 3rd, updated in its historical and biographical articles.The copyright of the material in the supplement to the 3rd edition was owned by Thomas Bonar
Thomas Bonar
Thomson Bonar was a wine-merchant who married the daughter of the engraver Andrew Bell, who co-founded the Encyclopædia Britannica with Colin Macfarquhar....
, who asked 20,000 pounds sterling for it. The supplemental material was licensed for the fourth edition for 100 pounds, but this copyright issue remained a problem through the 5th edition.
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.
5th edition
After Andrew Bell died in 1809, his heirs botched the fifth edition; the dilatory and unqualified 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. The fifth edition was a relatively minor revision of the fourth, which in turn was a relatively minor revision of the 3rd edition and its supplement. Afterwards, Bell's trustees sold the rights to the Britannica for 14,000 pounds to Archibald ConstableArchibald Constable
Archibald Constable was a Scottish publisher, bookseller and stationer.He was born at Carnbee, Fife, as the son of the land steward to the Earl of Kellie. In 1788 Archibald was apprenticed to Peter Hill, an Edinburgh bookseller, but in 1795 he started in business for himself as a dealer in rare...
, 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.
Supplement to the 5th edition
After securing sole-ownership rights in December 1816, Constable began work on a supplement to the 5th edition, even before the 5th 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 edition was the first to have an Index listing the 669 articles.This supplement had remarkably illustrious contributors. Constable was friends with Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
, who contributed the "Chivalry" article. To edit the supplement, Constable hired Macvey Napier
Macvey Napier
Macvey Napier FRS FRSE was a Scottish lawyer and an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica. A hard-working scholar in his youth, he was recruited by Archibald Constable...
, who recruited other eminent contributors such as Sir Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine...
, Jean-Baptiste Biot
Jean-Baptiste Biot
Jean-Baptiste Biot was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who established the reality of meteorites, made an early balloon flight, and studied the polarization of light.- Biography :...
, John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
, William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
, David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...
, and Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
. Thomas Young's
Thomas Young (scientist)
Thomas Young was an English polymath. He is famous for having partly deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics before Jean-François Champollion eventually expanded on his work...
article on Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
included the translation of the hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
on the Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...
.
6th edition
Constable also produced the 6th 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 MaclarenCharles Maclaren
Charles Maclaren was a Scottish editor born in Ormiston, Haddingtonshire, the son of a farmer and cattle-dealer. He was almost entirely self-educated, and when a young man became a clerk in Edinburgh. In 1817, with others, he established The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh and at first acted as...
. 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
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
by a partnership of four men: Adam Black (a publisher), Alexander Wight (a banker), Abram Thomson (a bookbinder) and Thomas Allen, the proprietor of the Caledonian Mercury
Caledonian Mercury
Caledonian Mercury was the name of a Scottish newspaper, published three times a week between 1720-1867. Numbers published from 1800 on are available online for registered users of the National Library of Scotland website....
. Not long after, Black bought out his partners and ownership of the Britannica passed to the Edinburgh publishing firm of A & C Black
A & C Black
A & C Black is a British book publishing company.The firm was founded in 1807 by Adam and Charles Black in Edinburgh, and moved to the Soho district of London in 1889. In 1851, the firm bought the copyright of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels for £27,000. In 1902 it published P. G...
.
7th edition
Macvey Napier
Macvey Napier FRS FRSE was a Scottish lawyer and an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica. A hard-working scholar in his youth, he was recruited by Archibald Constable...
, who was assisted by James Browne, LLD. It consisted of 21 volumes with 17,101 pages and 506 plates, with an Index of 187 pages. This was the first edition to include a general index for all articles, a practice that was maintained until 1974.
Many illustrious contributors were recruited to this edition, including Sir David Brewster
David Brewster
Sir David Brewster KH PRSE FRS FSA FSSA MICE was a Scottish physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, writer and university principal.-Early life:...
, Thomas de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
, Antonio Panizzi and Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson FRS was an English civil engineer. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son.-Early life :He was born on the 16th of...
. James Wilson
James Wilson
James Wilson was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. Wilson was elected twice to the Continental Congress, and was a major force in drafting the United States Constitution...
did all of zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, Dr. Hampden did all of Greek philosophy, and William Hosking
William Hosking
William Hosking FSA was a writer, lecturer, and architect who had an important influence on the growth and development of London in Victorian times...
contributed an excellent article on architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
. Mathematical diagrams were made from woodcuts.
The 7th edition 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.
8th edition
The 8th edition was published from 1853–1860 in 21 volumes, with 17,957 pages and 402 plates and a 239-page Index (published separately in 1861). Since Macvey NapierMacvey Napier
Macvey Napier FRS FRSE was a Scottish lawyer and an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica. A hard-working scholar in his youth, he was recruited by Archibald Constable...
died in 1847, Adam Black selected for its editor Dr. Thomas Stewart Traill
Thomas Stewart Traill
Thomas Stewart Traill was a Scottish physician, chemist, mineralogist, meteorologist, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence.He was the grandfather of the physicist, meteorologist and geologist Robert Traill Omond....
, 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).
Many long articles were carried over from the 7th edition, but new articles by illustrious contributors were added. In all, there were 344 contributors, including Lord Macaulay, Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
, Robert Chambers, the Rev. Charles Merivale
Charles Merivale
The Very Reverend Charles Merivale was an English historian and churchman, for many years dean of Ely Cathedral...
, Dr. Joseph Dalton Hooker
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, CB, MD, FRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend...
, Baron Robert Bunsen
Robert Bunsen
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium and rubidium with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic...
, Sir John Herschel
John Herschel
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH, FRS ,was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor, who in some years also did valuable botanical work...
, Professors Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
, John Stuart Blackie
John Stuart Blackie
John Stuart Blackie was a Scottish scholar and man of letters. He was born in Glasgow, and educated at the New Academy and afterwards at the Marischal College, in Aberdeen, where his father was manager of the Commercial Bank.After attending classes at Edinburgh University , Blackie spent three...
and William Thomson
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging...
(Lord Kelvin). This edition also featured the first American contributor to the Britannica, Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
, who wrote a 40,000-word hagiographic biography of George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
9th edition, The Scholar's Edition
The landmark ninth edition, often called 'the Scholar's Edition', was published from January 1875 to 1889 in 24 volumes with one index volume. Up to 1880, the editor was Thomas Spencer BaynesThomas Spencer Baynes
Thomas Spencer Baynes was a philosopher, son of a Baptist minister, born at Wellington, Somerset, intended to study for Baptist ministry, and was at a theological seminary at Bath with that view, but being strongly attracted to philosophical studies, left it and went to Edinburgh, when he became...
— 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 Edinburgh, and was the first contributor to the Britannica who addressed the historical interpretation of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, 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, Lord Rayleigh
John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, OM was an English physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered the element argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904...
, Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
and William Michael Rossetti
William Michael Rossetti
William Michael Rossetti was an English writer and critic.-Biography:Born in London, he was a son of immigrant Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti, and the brother of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti.He was one of the seven founder members of the...
. Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
, then 25, contributed an article about Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
that, being unenthusiastic, was never printed. There were roughly 1100 contributors altogether, a handful of which were women; this edition was also the first to include a significant article about women ("Women, Law Relating to").
The 9th edition was a critical success, and roughly 8,500 sets were sold in Britain. A & C Black
A & C Black
A & C Black is a British book publishing company.The firm was founded in 1807 by Adam and Charles Black in Edinburgh, and moved to the Soho district of London in 1889. In 1851, the firm bought the copyright of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels for £27,000. In 1902 it published P. G...
authorized two American firms, Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
and Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...
, to distribute the Britannica in the United States, and roughly 45,000 sets were sold. However, several hundred thousand pirated copies were also sold in the U.S., which still did not have copyright laws protecting foreign publications. Famous pirates of that era include the Philadelphian 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 pirate 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 alleged pirates of the 9th edition included John Wanamaker
John Wanamaker
John Wanamaker was a United States merchant, religious leader, civic and political figure, considered by some to be the father of modern advertising and a "pioneer in marketing." Wanamaker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-Biography:He was born on July 11, 1838.He opened his first store in...
and the Reverend Isaac Kaufmann Funk
Isaac Kaufmann Funk
Isaac Kaufmann Funk 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, and the grandfather of author Peter Funk...
of the Funk and Wagnalls
Funk and Wagnalls
Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English Language , and the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English...
encyclopedia. Richard S. Pearle & Co. of Chicago printed some sets in 1891, with 24 volumes plus an index Vol. 25, and in 1893 added 3 "American" volumes 25-27 with the index as Vol. 28. Some copies of this version say they were printed by Werner, also of Chicago, and in 1907 Werner printed the commonly found "New Werner Edition." In 1890, James Clarke published the Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica, Revised and Amended.
However, in 1896, Scribner's obtained court orders to shut down the pirate operations, whose printing plates were melted down as part of the enforcement.
In 1903, Saalfield Publishing
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....
published the Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
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
D. Appleton & Company
D. Appleton & Company was an American company founded by Daniel Appleton , who opened a general store which included books.- Timeline :* 1813 Relocated from Haverhill to Boston and imported books from England...
claimed that the 4 volume supplement used material from Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography.
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
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
has been printed, and to pay D. Appleton & Co. the sum of $2000 damages."
Horace Everett Hooper
Horace Everett Hooper
Horace Everett Hooper was the publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1897 until his death.-Early life:...
was an American business man, and a close associate of James Clarke, one of the leading American pirates. Hooper recognized the potential profit in the Britannica and, again in 1896, learned that both the Britannica and The Times of London were in financial straits. Hooper formed a partnership with Clarke, his brother George Clarke, and Walter Montgomery Jackson
Walter Montgomery Jackson
Walter Montgomery Jackson 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
Sales
A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....
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
Charles Frederic Moberly Bell
Charles Frederic Moberly Bell was a prominent British journalist and newspaper editor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
, 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
A & C Black
A & C Black is a British book publishing company.The firm was founded in 1807 by Adam and Charles Black in Edinburgh, and moved to the Soho district of London in 1889. In 1851, the firm bought the copyright of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels for £27,000. In 1902 it published P. G...
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 modern British critic has written
10th edition (supplement to the 9th)
Again under the sponsorship of The Times of London, the new owners quickly produced an 11-volume supplement to the 9th edition; the editors were Hugh ChisholmHugh Chisholm
Hugh Chisholm was a British journalist, and editor of the 11th and 12th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica....
, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace
Donald Mackenzie Wallace
Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace KCIE, KCVO was a British public servant, editor and foreign correspondent of The Times .-Early life:...
, Arthur T. Hadley and Franklin Henry Hooper
Franklin Henry Hooper
Franklin Henry Hooper was a U.S. editor. His older brother Horace Everett Hooper was publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Franklin was an editor there...
, the brother of the owner Horace Hooper. 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, and beginning to show their age. This led to the popular joke: "The Times is behind the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Encyclopædia Britannica is behind the times."
The 1903 advertising campaign for the 10th edition was an onslaught of direct marketing
Direct marketing
Direct marketing is a channel-agnostic form of advertising that allows businesses and nonprofits to communicate straight to the customer, with advertising techniques such as mobile messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional...
: 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
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British 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 pounds profit. When one British expert expressed surprise to Hooper
Horace Everett Hooper
Horace Everett Hooper was the publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1897 until his death.-Early life:...
that so many people would want an outdated encyclopedia, he replied, "They didn't; I made them want it."
11th edition
The renowned 11th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica was begun in 1903, and published in 1910–1911 in 28 volumes, with a one-volume Index. Edited by Hugh ChisholmHugh Chisholm
Hugh Chisholm was a British journalist, and editor of the 11th and 12th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica....
in London and by Franklin Hooper
Franklin Hooper
Franklin William Hooper, LL.D. was an American institute director. He was born at Walpole, New Hampshire and from 1867 to 1871 studied at Antioch College, Ohio. He graduated from Harvard University in 1875. He taught science at Adelphi College, Brooklyn, in 1880–89. He was president of Antioch...
in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, 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-Powell
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Bt, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB , also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement....
writing on kite-flying
Kite
A kite is a tethered aircraft. The necessary lift that makes the kite wing fly is generated when air flows over and under the kite's wing, producing low pressure above the wing and high pressure below it. This deflection also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind...
; Arthur Eddington on astronomy; Edmund Gosse
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...
on literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and Donald Tovey 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
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
, 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
Horace Everett Hooper was the publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1897 until his death.-Early life:...
, 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
Walter Montgomery Jackson
Walter Montgomery Jackson 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...
, becoming the sole owner of the Britannica. The public furor caused The Times 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, Hooper managed to secure Cambridge University as a new sponsor; thus, the 11th edition was published initially by Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 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 and Co. of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, who issued a physically smaller but complete version. The owner of Sears, philanthropist Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...
, was friends with Horace Hooper and enthusiastic about the Britannica's promise; he single-handedly saved the Britannica from bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
several times over the next fifteen years. Although Sears' smaller 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.
12th and 13th editions (competing supplements to the 11th)
The poor sales of the war years brought the Britannica to the brink of bankruptcyBankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
. Luckily, the CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of Sears Roebuck, philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...
, 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
Horace Everett Hooper was the publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1897 until his death.-Early life:...
for $1.25 million dollars. The Britannica's headquarters were moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where they have remained ever since. In 1922, a 3-volume supplement to the 11th edition was released that summarized the developments just before, during and after World War I; these three volumes, taken together with the 11th edition, became known as the 12th edition. Horace Hooper died in 1922, a few weeks after the publication of the 12th edition. This edition was a commercial failure, losing Sears roughly $1.75 million dollars, after which Sears gave it back to Hooper's widow, Harriett Meeker Cox, and her brother, William J. Cox, who ran the company from 1923-1928.
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 12th edition. Again taken together with the 11th edition, the new volumes became known as the 13th edition, which maintained the Britannica's tradition of illustrious contributors: Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts...
, Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
, Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch , GCB, OM, DSO was a French soldier, war hero, military theorist, and writer credited with possessing "the most original and subtle mind in the French army" in the early 20th century. He served as general in the French army during World War I and was made Marshal of France in its...
, Gustav Stresemann
Gustav Stresemann
was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic. He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.Stresemann's politics defy easy categorization...
, Thomas G. Masaryk and Elihu Root
Elihu Root
Elihu Root was an American lawyer and statesman and the 1912 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the prototype of the 20th century "wise man", who shuttled between high-level government positions in Washington, D.C...
.
In 1928, Rosenwald bought back the rights to the Britannica, leaving Cox as publisher. Cox argued forcefully for a new 14th edition, pointing out that the 11th edition (the bulk of the 12 and 13th editions) was badly out of date. Cox also tried to involve the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
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.
14th edition
By 1926, the 11th edition was beginning to show its age, and work on a new edition was begun. The editors were J. L. Garvin in London and Franklin Henry HooperFranklin Henry Hooper
Franklin Henry Hooper was a U.S. editor. His older brother Horace Everett Hooper was publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Franklin was an editor there...
in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The 14th edition took three years to complete, at the then exorbitant cost of $2.5 million dollars, all of it invested by Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...
of Sears, Roebuck and Company
Sears, Roebuck and Company
Sears, officially named Sears, Roebuck and Co., is an American chain of department stores which was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century...
. 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
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. Nevertheless, the 14th also included many illustrious contributors, including eighteen Nobel laureates
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
in science, such as Robert Millikan
Robert Millikan
Robert A. Millikan was an American experimental physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his measurement of the charge on the electron and for his work on the photoelectric effect. He served as president of Caltech from 1921 to 1945...
, Albert Abraham Michelson
Albert Abraham Michelson
Albert Abraham Michelson was an American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson-Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics...
and Arthur Compton
Arthur Compton
Arthur Holly Compton was an American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his discovery of the Compton effect. He served as Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1945 to 1953.-Early years:...
. More coverage was given to popular entertainment, with Gene Tunney
Gene Tunney
James Joseph "Gene" Tunney was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1926-1928 who defeated Jack Dempsey twice, first in 1926 and then in 1927. Tunney's successful title defense against Dempsey is one of the most famous bouts in boxing history and is known as The Long Count Fight...
writing on boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
, Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
on acting
Acting
Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play....
and Irene Castle on ballroom dancing. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
contributed a well-regarded article on socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. In all, there were roughly 3500 named contributors, of which roughly half were American. The 14th edition was again criticized for sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
; for example, less than 6% of its 13,000 biographies were of women
Woman
A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
.
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
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
struck scarcely a month after the release of the 14th edition, and sales plummeted. Despite the unfailing support of the Sears Roebuck company, the Britannica almost went bankrupt over the next few years. Rosenwald died in 1932, and General Robert E. Wood
Robert E. Wood
Robert Elkington Wood was a U.S. Army Brigadier General and businessman best known for his leadership of Sears, Roebuck and Company.- Early life :...
took over; Cox was removed as publisher and the Secretary-Treasurer of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell
Elkan Harrison Powell
Elkan Harrison Powell was the president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. who introduced the policies of continuous revision and of leveraging the Britannica's fame to market successful spin-off products, such as historical overviews, compilations of good Britannica articles, children's...
was installed as the new President of the Britannica.
Policy of continuous revision
E. H. PowellElkan Harrison Powell
Elkan Harrison Powell was the president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. who introduced the policies of continuous revision and of leveraging the Britannica's fame to market successful spin-off products, such as historical overviews, compilations of good Britannica articles, children's...
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" continues to be published even today. 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 Ten Eventful Years, a summary of the national and international events surrounding World War II (1937–1946).
Transfer of ownership to William Benton
Sears Roebuck published the Britannica until 1943. In 1941, Sears offered the rights to the Britannica as a gift to the University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. The story of this offer was recounted at the bicentennial banquet
Bicentennial of the Encyclopædia Britannica
The first two pamphlets of the Encyclopædia Britannica were issued in December 1768, being sold from the printing office of its originator, Colin Macfarquhar, in Nicholson Street in Edinburgh...
of the Encyclopædia Britannica
The University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
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. After their deaths, the Benton Foundation
Benton Foundation
The Benton Foundation is a nonprofit organization set up by former U.S. Senator, William Benton and his wife, Helen Hemingway Benton. Its present chairman and CEO is their son, Charles Benton....
continued to manage the Britannica until it was sold to Jacqui Safra in 1996.
First version (1974–1984)
Despite the policy of continuous revision, the 14th edition of the Britannica gradually became outdated, much as its predecessors, the 9th and 11th editions. Beginning in the early 1960s, the failings of the 14th edition began to be collated and published by physicistPhysicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Harvey Einbinder
Harvey Einbinder
Dr. Harvey Einbinder , an American physicist and amateur historian, spent five years combing the Encyclopædia Britannica for flaws, and found enough to fill a 390-page book, called The Myth of the Britannica, in 1964...
, culminating in his highly critical 390-page book, The Myth of Britannica (1964). 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 dollars 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 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
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
's grand conception of epistemology. Thus, the Propædia was intended to be the road-map of all knowledge, within which every fact, technique, and theory could be organized.
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–present)
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 current 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
Philip W. Goetz
Philip W. Goetz was the Executive Editor for the first version of the 15th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. More importantly, he was the Chief Editor for the second version of the 15th edition, which was a massive revision and re-organization of the Britannica.Goetz, who obtained a B.S...
, 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
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
s were merged into what became a 310-page article "United States of America". The Macropædia
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 the ancient Greek words for "large" and "instruction"; the best English...
was also restricted somewhat from 19 volumes to the present 17 volumes. At the same time, the number of Micropædia
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 Mortimer J...
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
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, which almost fills one page. Finally, the Propædia
Propædia
The one-volume Propædia is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, the other two being the 12-volume Micropædia and the 17-volume Macropædia. The Propædia is intended as a topical organization of the Britannica's contents, complementary to the alphabetical...
s Outline of Knowledge was simplified for easier use.
Development of electronic versions
In the 1980s MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
approached Britannica Inc. to collaborate on a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
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
Encarta
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and...
.
In 1990 the Britannica's sales reached an all-time high of $650 million, but Encarta, released in 1993, soon became a software staple with almost every computer purchase and the Britannica's market share plummeted. Britannica Inc. 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 Inc. 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 Inc. was bought in 1996 by Swiss financier Jacob Safra
Jacob Safra
Jacqui Eli Safra is a Swiss investor, descendant of the Lebanon-Swiss Jewish Safra banking family. Some of his investments include Encyclopædia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, and Spring Mountain Vineyards, a large wine-growing estate located in Saint Helena, California. He is the nephew of Edmond...
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
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Currently, Britannica co-operates with Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
companies (遠流/智慧藏學習科技公司) to provide a Traditional Chinese-English bilingual version encyclopedia on internet according to the 2002 edition. It is the first bilingual product of Britannica.
Former editor-in-chief Robert McHenry
Robert McHenry
Robert Dale McHenry is an American editor, encyclopedist, and writer. McHenry worked from 1967 for Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. or associated companies, becoming editor-in-chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1992, a position he held until 1997...
believes that Britannica failed to exploit its early advantages in the market for electronic encyclopedias. Britannica had, for example, published the second multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
encyclopedia titled Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia
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. The encyclopedia is now advertised as Compton's by Britannica.Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia...
as early as 1989 (the first one being the Academic American Encyclopedia
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 ....
published by Grolier), 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.