Their answer? The Answer Girls, an elite corps of women who would research and answer any question a Britannica owner might have. “Britannica had to find a way to stay relevant.” “Folks did not have disposable income, a lot of it, to spend on encyclopedias,” Pappas told correspondent Luke Burbank. Its useful, practical information also contained some guesses: a short article from 1768 spells California with two L’s, and says it’s a large country of the West Indies – “It is uncertain whether it be a peninsula or an island.” The 1768 edition’s entry for “Callifornia.” Photo via CBS News.įrom those humble and sometimes factually-challenged roots, grew a great tree of knowledge, considered by many to be the definitive resource of information over the years, all collected in one place.īut there were also challenging times for the company: the Great Depression of the 1930s, for example. So there they were, two guys with no formal training and one very drunk editor managed to write and publish the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in three volumes. “He was a very learned man,” Pappas said, with (he added) a wonderful capacity for drinking. They also had an editor, William Smellie. “It combined long, scholarly essays with short definitional entries and practical information.”įounded in 1768 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Britannica was the brainchild of Colin Macfarquhar, a printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver. “Britannica did something unique,” said executive editor Ted Pappas. But before you could Google it, and long before we met Alexa, there was Britannica.Īs in Encyclopedia Britannica, which turns 250 years old this month. Most of us walk around with devices that give us instant access to all the knowledge in human history.

Encyclopaedia britannica 1768