Home > Encyclopędia Britannica
300px 1913 advertisement with the slogan When in doubt " look it up " in the Encyclopędia BritannicaThe Encyclopędia Britannica is the oldest and most prestigious English-language general encyclopedia. Its articles are commonly considered accurate, reliable and well-written.
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 1870s for its ninth and tenth editions. For the eleventh edition the publication became associated with the University of Cambridge, also in England. The trademark and publication rights were sold after the 11th edition to Sears Roebuck and it moved to Chicago, Illinois, United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in where it has remained.
Encyclopędia Britannica Inc.Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. is the company best known for publishing the Encyclopedia Britannica, the world's oldest continuously-published encyclopedia. The company was founded in Edinburgh in the 18th century, in the atmosphere of the Scottish Enlight (properly spelt with ę, the ae- ligatureIn writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. Generally, ligatures replace characters that occur next to each other when they share common components. A letter with an accent mark is not usual), now owns a trademark on the word "Britannica." As of 2004, the most complete version of Encyclopędia Britannica contains about 120,000 articles, with 44 million words, and a comprehensive index, the first of its kind for a major encyclopedia. It is published in paper form (32 volumes containing 65,000 articles, list price US$1400), online (120,000 articles, brief summaries of articles can be viewed for free, and the full text is available for US$10 per month or US$60 per year for individual subscribers), on CD-ROMThe CD-ROM (an abbreviation for " Compact Disc Read-Only Memory" ( ROM) ) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. A CD-ROM is a flat, plastic disc wit (more than 100,000 articles, US$50), and on DVD-ROMDVD-ROM is a non-volatile optical data storage medium similar to CD-ROM. Like CD-ROMs, they use a similar technology of microscopic pits on a reflective surface that are read by a laser beam. The difference is that DVD-ROM allows information to be stored (more than 100,000 articles, US$50).
The current version of Britannica was written by over 4,000 contributors, including noted scholars such as Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman (born July 31, 1912) is a U. economist, known primarily for his advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. In 1976 he was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. His book Free to Choose coauthored with h, Carl Sagan and Michael DeBakey. Thirty-five percent of the content of the encyclopedia has been re-written within the last two years.
The current publisher is billionaire Swiss financier Jacqui Safra, under whose ownership the company has experienced unprecedented financial woes with freelance contributors waiting up to six months for checks and staff going years without promotions and raises. Cost-cutting measures have included mandates to use free photos. Britannica told employees it would raise the contribution paid into their 401(k) accounts, then eliminated them entirely. A company spokesperson once said, "We've had some cost reductions and belt-tightening but we're not going into details...We're a privately held company..."
Dale Hoiberg is the publication's current Editor. One former Editor in Chief was Robert McHenry, thought to be among the corps of administrators responsible for the publication's decline in the 1990s. Another, Don Yannis , former CEO of the company when it was "hemorrhaging money," serves on Britannica's Board of Directors. Accusations of laissez-faire management practices, poorly chosen and inexperienced senior managers, technical incompetence, and downright greed, though disputed, have damaged the reputation of one of western civilization's greatest educational tools.
