Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Encyclopaedia Britannica is one of the most comprehensive and relied upon encyclopedias published. The Britannica has been published in 27 editions, starting with the first edition published from 1768 to 1771, to the most recent edition printed in 2007. The recent editions of the Britannica are available in printed, digital and online formats, and there are a Student Edition and a Concise Edition available. Many libraries have online subscriptions as we;; as paper copies.

History

The Encyclopædia Britannica was created during the Scottish Enlightenment of the late 18th Century. In this atmosphere of intellectual ferment, Colin Macfarquhar, a printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver, formed a "Society of Gentlemen" to produce an encyclopedia, inspired by the highly influential Enlightenment project, the French Encyclopédie of Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot.

First Edition, 1768-1771

The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica described itself as "A Dictonary of Arts and Sciences compiled upon a new plan. In which The different Sciences and Arts are digested into distinct Treatises or Systems; and The various Technical Terms, &c. are explained as they occur in the order of the Alphabet." The first edition was compiled and released in individual "fascicles", which were eventually gathered into three separate volumes, A-B, C-L, M-Z. Publication started in 1768, the first volume (A-B) was completed in 1769, the second (C-L) in 1770, and the third (M-Z) in 1771. In the first edition, many entries were short, with references to large topic articles which covered large areas of knowledge in great depth. For example, the article on "anatomy" extended 165 pages, while the entries for "bone" and "brain" were one-line references to the article on "anatomy".

Ninth Edition, 1875-1889

The Scholar's Edition, so-called because of the number of leading scholars who contributed articles.

Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911

see Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition

The Eleventh Edition of the Britannica is, a century after its publication, regarded as one of the best encyclopedias ever published. It ran 29 volumes, each about 1000 pages. Unlike earlier editions, the Eleventh Edition was compiled all at once and released all at once, so the earlier volumes were not outdated when the last volumes appeared. The Eleventh Edition was the first produced in cooperation with Cambridge University. Due to the authortative nature of the Eleventh Edition, and the lapse of copyright on it, many websites and publishers have made reprint editiions available. The Wikipedia initially populated a large number of its articles by copying articles from the Eleventh Edition.

Twelfth and Thirteenth Editions, 1922, 1926

The Twelfth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was a reprint of the Eleventh Edition, with three supplemental volumes to cover all the changes in the intervening decade, a decade which was marked by World War I, with its accompanying tremendous increase in military technology, organization of industry, and the dissolution of several empires and the creation of a multitude of new states in Europe and transfers of colonies from one power to another. The Thirteenth Edition of 1926 added two more volumes, bringing the set to 34 volumes

Continuous Revision

The Fourteenth edition appeared in 1928 as a joint project with the University of Chicago, which purchased ownership and moved operations to Chicago. All articles were freshly written. Beginning in 1933, the publisher began a practice of "continuous revision", where articles are revised between printings, and not just at the creation of a new edition.

Fifteenth Edition, 1974-1994

In 1974 the Fifteenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica saw a significant change in structure, splitting the encyclopedia into three parts: the Micropædia, with short summary articles on many thousands of topics, the Macropædia, with a small number of in-depth articles, and the Propædia, a single volume containing a structural outline of human knowledge.