The Encyclop�dia Britannica (properly spelt with �, the ae-ligature) is the oldest 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 Encyclop�die, 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. Horace Everett Hooper was publisher from 1897 to 1922. 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 States. Sears Roebuck offered it as a gift to the University of Chicago in 1941. William Benton figured as publisher from 1943 to his death in 1973, followed by his widow Helen Hemingway Benton until her own death in 1974. In January 1996 it was purchased by billionaire Swiss financier Jacqui Safra.

Encyclop�dia Britannica Inc. now owns a trademark on the word "Britannica." As of 2004, the most complete version of Encyclop�dia 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), and on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM (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 Friedman, Carl Sagan, and Michael DeBakey. Thirty-five percent of the content of the encyclopedia has been re-written within the last two years. Under the influence of the director of planning, Mortimer Adler, the current, 15th edition is published not as one alphabetical sequence of volumes but multiple sets that covered topics in different degrees of depth: The current edition is divided into a two volume index, a 10-volume Microp�dia which contains short articles, a 19-volume Macrop�dia for longer articles, plus one volume called Prop�dia that provides a structured hierarchy to all the information in the set.

Dale Hoiberg is the publication's current editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors were Hugh Chisholm (1903-1913, 1920-1924), James Louis Garvin (1926-1932), Franklin Henry Hooper (1932-1938), Walter Yust (1938-1960), Harry S. Ashmore (1960-1963), Warren E. Preece (1964-1975), and Robert McHenry (1992-1997). Ted Pappas is the current executive editor. Earlier holders of that position were John V. Dodge (1950-1964) and Philip W. Goetz. Don Yannias, former CEO of the company when it was "hemorrhaging money," serves on Britannica's Board of Directors.

Edition history

References

• Herman Kogan, The Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)
• H. Einbinder, The Myth of the Britannica (New York: Grove Press, 1964)

External links

• Encyclop�dia Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/) — official website
• Dusting off the Britannica (http://www.businessweek.com/1997/42/b3549124.htm) article from Business Week (1997)
• One reader's catalogue of errors in the Encyclop�dia Britannica (http://members.cox.net/kevin82/eberrors.htm)
• Slice of the 1911 (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13600) Encyclop�dia Britannica, as public domain text on Project Gutenberg
• The Lies And Fallacies Of The Encyclop�dia Britannica. How Powerful And Shameless Clerical Forces Castrated A Famous Work Of Reference (http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/lies_of_britannica.html) by Joseph McCabe, c. 1947. Tract that claims to show systematic religious bias in the Britannica of the time.
• Vintage Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/original?content_id=1395) or "Evolving Knowledge" — excerpts on a single topic selected from various Britannica editions since 1768

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