Encyclopædia Britannica

A product of the Scottish enlightenment, it was originally published in Edinburgh by Adam and Charles Black beginning in the 18th century. Unlike the French Encyclopédie, Britannica was an extremely conservative publication. Later editions were usually dedicated to the reigning monarch. The publication moved from Scotland to London and became associated with The Times newspaper in the 1870's for its ninth and tenth editions. For the eleventh edition the publication became associated with Cambridge University. The trademark and publication rights were sold after the 11th edition to Sears Roebuck and it moved to Chicago where it has remained. The current publisher is Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. (properly spelt with æ, the ae-ligature), which now owns a trademark on the word "Britannica".

As of 2004, the Encyclopædia Britannica contains 75,000 articles with 44 million words. It is published in paper form (32 volumes, list price $1400), online (where brief summaries of articles can be viewed for free, and the full text is available for $10 per month or $60 per year for individual subscribers), on CD-ROM ($50), and on DVD-ROM.

Edition history

Edition	Published	Size
1st	1768-1771	3 vol.
2nd	1777-1784	10 vol.
3rd	1788-1797, 1801 sup.	18 vol. + 2 sup.
4th	1801-1809	20 vol.
5th	1815	20 vol.
6th	1820-1823, 1815-1824 sup.	20 vol. + 2 sup.
7th	1830-1842	21 vol.
8th	1852-1860	21 vol. + index
9th	1870-1890	24 vol. + index.	(1)
10th	1902-1903	9th ed. + 9 sup.	(2)
11th	1910-1911	29 vol.	(3)
12th	1921-1922	11th ed. + 3 sup.
13th	1926	11th ed.+ 6 sup.
14th	1929-1973	24 vol.
15th	1974-1984	28 vol.
16th	1985-	32 vol.

vol. = volume, sup. = supplement

(1)  9th ed. featured articles by notables of the day, such as James Maxwell on Electricity and Magnetism, and William Thomson (who became Lord Kelvin) on Heat.
(2) 10th ed. added a maps volume and an index volume
(3) 11th ed. Considered to be the classic edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica and available in the public domain (see 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica).

The first CD-ROM edition was issued in 1994.

Sources

2. New York Times, February 8 1994. Part 1 of the business section in article reporting Britannica's announcement of their going online.

External links

• Encyclopaedia Britannica - official website
• Dusting off the Britannica - article from Business Week (1997)
• The Lies And Fallacies Of The Encyclopedia Britannica. How Powerful And Shameless Clerical Forces Castrated A Famous Work Of Reference by Joseph McCabe, c. 1947. Tract that claims to show systematic religious bias in the Britannica of the time.
• , a list of alleged mistakes in the Britannica and how they have been corrected in Wikipedia

Referenced By