The (Latin for "British Encyclopaedia"), previously published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a popular encyclopaedia which right now published as an online. It is written in British English. It was originally only printed on paper, but late in the 20th century it expanded to have digital, or computer versions as well. Since 2010, it is out of print in paper versions. The encyclopaedia is split into many books. The articles in the books are arranged in alphabetical order. There have been versions of it that are for children as well. It is the largest printed encyclopaedia in English, and the second largest encyclopaedia. The largest is Wikipedia. Many people consider it to be the best encyclopaedia, because they think it is accurate and has lots of detail.
The encyclopaedia was once very small, the first edition in 1768 only had 3 books. Slowly it became bigger. The last edition, the 15th, started in 1974, has 29 books, plus two indexes. It includes an extra book called Propædia, to classify knowledge. The 29 books and made up of a Macropædia and a Micropædia. The Macropædia is a larger one, with more detailed articles that can be as long as 300 pages, made up of 17 books, while the Micropædia is the smaller one with many much shorter articles that are usually less than 750 words. The Micropædia is used for fast-checking, but for more detailed information, people have to use the Macropædia. Each book is very big, more than 1,000 pages per book. Every year, an update book was published. The last yearbook was for 2018, published in 2017.
In March 2012, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced it would no longer publish printed editions, and would focus instead on "Encyclopædia Britannica Online".
The articles in the Britannica are for educated adults, not for children, and written by about 100 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors. The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopaedia now. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew very popular, with its third edition in 1801 comprising of 21 books.
The size of the Britannica is almost the same since the 1930s, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. The encyclopaedia was once owned by British people. In the 20th century it was American-owned, but it is still written in British English. Over time, the encyclopaedia has had difficulties trying to earn money, which almost every encyclopaedia is facing.
Many different people have owned the Britannica. They include Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and William Benton. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is owned by Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire and actor. Information technology has become better and more electronic encyclopaedias such as "Microsoft Encarta" and Wikipedia have made people not want to buy encyclopaedias in print anymore. So that it still can survive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has kept on telling people that the "Britannica" is good and accurate, made the encyclopaedia cheaper, and made electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD and the World Wide Web. Since the early 1930s, the company has also promoted spin-off reference works.
There are 15 official editions of the encyclopaedia, with some extensions to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the Table below). Actually, one can say that the 10th edition was only an extension to the 9th edition, and the 12th and 13th editions were extensions to the 11th edition. The 15th edition was reorganised in 1985, and the updated, current version is the 15th edition.
Through the encyclopaedia's history, the "Britannica" wanted to be an excellent reference book and to provide learning materials for those who want to study. In 1974, the 15th edition had a third wish: to put together all that everyone knows. The history of the "Britannica" can be divided into five main eras, or lengths of time.
In its first years (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the "Britannica" was controlled by the people who first wrote it, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and by their friends and relations, such as Thomas Bonar, George Gleig and Archibald Constable. The "Britannica" was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, a city in Scotland, called the "Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan". It was written to replace the French "Encyclopédie". Its logo, which is the floral emblem of Scotland, shows that the "Britannica" was a Scottish business. The encyclopaedia being created is one of the most famous events that happened in the time when Scotland started inventing many things, or the Age of Enlightenment. The "Britannica" started as three-book set ( in the 1st edition) written by one young editor—William Smellie— Many people said that the first edition of the encyclopaedia was very inaccurate, and had many problems in it. Slowly, the "Britannica" changed, in the first era, to a 20-book set written by many people. Although a few other encyclopaedias had been fighting with the "Britannica", such as "Rees's Cyclopaedia" and Coleridge's "Encyclopaedia Metropolitana", these encyclopedias either went bankrupt or were not finished because the people writing them argued. When the first era was almost over, the "Britannica" had many people helping to write it, all having different types of skills. The encyclopaedia managed to get so many people by inviting their friends to help.
In the second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the "Britannica" was owned by the Edinburgh company, A & C Black. Although some of the people who helped write the "Britannica" helped because they were friends of the most important editors, many other people wanted to help the "Britannica" because it was becoming very successful. These people came from many other countries, and some of them were very famous for the things they wrote about. An index of all the articles was written to add to the 7th edition of the encyclopaedia, and they continued to make an index until 1974. The first English chief editor was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who led the making of the famous 9th edition, which is also called the "Scholar's Edition". The 9th edition is considered to be the "Britannica" most meant for students ever written. However, at the end of the 19th century, the 9th edition was already too old and the "Britannica" had many financial problems.
In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–1973), the "Britannica" was owned by American people, who started to advertise a lot to earn more money. The American owners also slowly made the "Britannica's" articles simpler, so it could serve more people. The 11th edition is said by many people to be the best edition of the encyclopedia. Its owner, Horace Hooper, worked extremely hard to make the 11th edition perfect. When Hooper had financial problems, the "Britannica" was managed by Sears Roebuck for about 18 years (1920–1923, 1928–1943). In 1932, the vice-president of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell, owned the "Britannica".
In 1936, he started to continuously revise the encyclopaedia often (still done so today), in which every article is checked at least two times every ten years. This was a big difference from before, when the articles were not changed until they wrote a new edition, about every 25 years, with some articles used again without revising them. He also quickly made some educational products which made the encyclopedia even more well known by everyone. In 1943, William Benton managed the "Britannica" until his death in 1973. Benton also set up the Benton Foundation, which managed the "Britannica" until 1996. In 1968, near the end of this era, the "Britannica" celebrated its 200-year anniversary, and in 2014 published the last printed edition.