The Encyclopaedia Britannica

The “New Plan”

The full title was Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Compiled upon a New Plan, and the plan is the part that deserves the credit usually spent on the founding date. Rival dictionaries broke every subject into hundreds of scattered alphabetical fragments. Britannica’s preface scorned this as “dismembering the sciences”, and instead gathered related material into long treatises — more than forty of them — arranged alphabetically alongside short entries. “Anatomy” ran to about 165 pages; the shortest, such as “Alligation” and “Watch and Clock Work”, were a couple.

Smellie borrowed liberally, by his own cheerful admission, from the authorities of the day, including material attributed to Benjamin Franklin on electricity and John Locke on human understanding. That was ordinary practice in eighteenth-century compilation, and the result was a modest commercial success, reprinted in London in 1773 and 1775. Who actually devised the new plan is genuinely unsettled: some sources credit Smellie, others Macfarquhar, and a biographer of James Tytler even claimed Tytler proposed the whole project. Smellie remains the conventionally accepted first editor.

Callifornia, and Other Embarrassments

A site whose standard is accuracy over patriotism has to enjoy the first edition’s mistakes rather than tidy them away. It genuinely described “Callifornia”, with two Ls, as “a large country of the West Indies”, adding that it was uncertain whether it was an island or a peninsula. It genuinely divided humans into five categories, one of them “Monstrous”, following the Linnaean classification of the era — a reminder that eighteenth-century reference works carried eighteenth-century prejudice in their bones.

Why Edinburgh?

Because in 1768 Edinburgh was one of the most intellectually fertile cities on earth. Voltaire wrote in 1762 that “today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening”, and contemporaries called the city a “hotbed of genius”. Britannica’s exact contemporaries in that small town included the philosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith, the geologist James Hutton and the chemist Joseph Black.

The practical conditions mattered as much as the genius. Scotland had world-class universities, a strong tradition of broad-based schooling, a thriving print trade with numerous printing houses and paper mills, and a dense network of clubs and societies where ideas circulated. Smellie sat at the centre of that world: a co-founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, a friend of Robert Burns — who called him “that old Veteran in Genius, Wit and Bawdry” — and a working printer. Britannica is the Enlightenment’s urge to organise and democratise knowledge, bound in three volumes and sold sixpence at a time.

The Editions That Made the Legend

Britannica grew fast. The second edition (1777–84), edited by the extraordinary James Tytler, ballooned to ten volumes and added history and biography for the first time. Tytler was a debt-ridden eccentric who, in August 1784, became the first person in Britain to make a balloon ascent, in Edinburgh — hence “Balloon Tytler”. The third edition (1788–97) reached eighteen volumes and reportedly returned a large profit, said to be around £42,000, to Bell.

Two later editions are still revered. The ninth (1875–89), the “Scholar’s Edition”, recruited an astonishing roster of contributors including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, T. H. Huxley, Algernon Swinburne and Robert Louis Stevenson, and is often called the scholarly pinnacle of English-language reference. The eleventh (1910–11), twenty-nine volumes, was the first published all at once rather than volume by volume; it married scholarship to readable prose, remains a collector’s item, and — being out of copyright — circulates freely online to this day.

The Drift Away From Scotland

Editorial and commercial control moved south, then across the Atlantic. After Bell died in 1809 the rights passed to the Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable, and after his death in 1827 to the Edinburgh firm A & C Black, who published Britannica for some seventy years. In 1901 the rights were bought by the American businessmen Horace Hooper and Walter Jackson — the decisive shift.

In 1920 the Chicago retail giant Sears, Roebuck & Co. bought the company, as much a philanthropic gesture by Sears chief Julius Rosenwald as a business decision, and moved the base to Chicago. After a period of instability, in 1943 the advertising magnate and University of Chicago vice-president William Benton took control, with the University lending its name and editorial advice; Benton later willed the company to the Benton Foundation, whose profits supported the University. The radically reorganised fifteenth edition, known as “Britannica 3” and split into Micropaedia, Macropaedia and Propaedia, appeared in 1974.

The End of Print

In January 1996 the financially struggling company, which had declared bankruptcy late in 1995, was sold by the Benton Foundation to the Swiss financier Jacqui Safra for $136 million. Britannica had actually been an early digital pioneer — a LexisNexis electronic version in 1981, a CD-ROM in the late 1980s, an online edition in 1994 — but it could not monetise the web fast enough, and was battered first by Microsoft Encarta and then by Wikipedia. Print sales peaked in 1990 at 120,000 sets in the United States; by 1996 that had collapsed to around 40,000 a year.

On 13 March 2012, president Jorge Cauz announced that Britannica would stop printing its flagship 32-volume set after 244 years; the 2010 edition was the last. That set weighed about 129 pounds, held roughly 44 million words, and was printed in exactly 12,000 copies, of which 8,000 had sold, leaving 4,000 in a warehouse at $1,395 each. Cauz told the Associated Press that the decision had “nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google”, that Britannica now sold its digital products to a far larger audience, and that “a printed encyclopedia is obsolete the minute that you print it”. Print had fallen below 1% of revenue. Britannica continues as a digital-only operation based in Chicago, still employing editors and outside experts.

Britannica Versus Wikipedia

For generations a bound set on the shelf was a status symbol of an aspirational household, and Britannica’s reputation rested on expert authorship and editorial fact-checking. That reputation was tested directly in 2005, when Nature ran a blind comparison of science articles (Jim Giles, “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”, 15 December 2005). Across 42 article pairs, reviewers found 123 errors in Britannica, 2.9 per article, against 162 in Wikipedia, 3.9 per article — with each work containing four of eight identified serious errors.

Britannica responded with a furious rebuttal titled “Fatally Flawed”, arguing that Nature had misrepresented its own data and had reviewed material that was not even from the encyclopaedia. Nature stood by the study. The episode is now a landmark in the argument about expert versus crowd-sourced knowledge, and the honest way to cite it is as a notable but challenged comparison rather than a verdict.

Timeline

1. 1704

   John Harris publishes Lexicon Technicum

   An English encyclopaedic dictionary, decades before Britannica

2. 1728

   Ephraim Chambers publishes his Cyclopaedia

   Britannica's direct inspiration; also the seed of the French Encyclopédie

3. 1762

   Voltaire praises Scotland

   “Today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts”

4. 10 Dec 1768

   The first number goes on sale in Edinburgh

   Sixpence, or eightpence on fine paper; advertised in the Caledonian Mercury

5. 1768–1771

   100 weekly numbers issued

   Bound into three quarto volumes, c. 2,500 pages, 160 plates by Bell

6. 1773 and 1775

   Reprinted in London

   A modest commercial success

7. 1777–1784

   Second edition, ten volumes

   Edited by James Tytler; history and biography added for the first time

8. Aug 1784

   Tytler makes Britain's first balloon ascent

   In Edinburgh — hence “Balloon Tytler”

9. 1788–1797

   Third edition, 18 volumes

   Reportedly returned around £42,000 to Bell

10. 1809

    Andrew Bell dies

    Rights pass to the Edinburgh publisher Archibald Constable

11. 1827

    Constable dies

    A & C Black of Edinburgh publish it for some 70 years

12. 1875–1889

    Ninth edition, the “Scholar's Edition”

    Maxwell, Kelvin, Huxley, Swinburne and Stevenson among contributors

13. 1901

    Rights bought by Horace Hooper and Walter Jackson

    American ownership begins

14. 1910–1911

    Eleventh edition, 29 volumes

    First published all at once; now public domain and freely readable

15. 1920

    Sears, Roebuck & Co. buys Britannica

    Base moves to Chicago

16. 1943

    William Benton takes control

    The University of Chicago lends its name and editorial advice

17. 1974

    Fifteenth edition, “Britannica 3”

    Reorganised as Micropaedia, Macropaedia and Propaedia

18. 1981–1994

    Early digital pioneer

    LexisNexis text 1981, CD-ROM in the late 1980s, online in 1994

19. 1990

    Print sales peak

    120,000 sets sold in the United States; about 40,000 a year by 1996

20. Jan 1996

    Sold to Jacqui Safra for $136 million

    After bankruptcy in late 1995

21. 15 Dec 2005

    Nature publishes its comparison with Wikipedia

    2.9 errors per Britannica article against 3.9; Britannica rebuts fiercely

22. 2010

    The last printed set

    32 volumes, about 129 pounds, roughly 44 million words

23. 13 Mar 2012

    End of print announced

    After 244 years; digital-only thereafter

Did You Know?

• Smellie said he compiled the whole encyclopaedia “with a pair of scissars”, clipping from other authors.
• The second edition's editor, James Tytler, was the first person in Britain to go up in a balloon — Edinburgh, August 1784.
• The first edition told readers that “Callifornia” was a large country of the West Indies, and possibly an island.
• The beloved eleventh edition of 1911 is out of copyright, so its entire text is free to read online.
• Robert Louis Stevenson, Lord Kelvin and T. H. Huxley all wrote for the ninth edition.
• The final 2010 print set weighed about 129 pounds and held roughly 44 million words.
• Exactly 12,000 copies of that last set were printed; 4,000 were still in a warehouse when print ended.
• Smellie is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and Robert Burns called him “that old Veteran in Genius, Wit and Bawdry”.
• The title page credited “a Society of Gentlemen in Scotland” — possibly just the three founders.
• Britannica was selling an online edition in 1994, years before Wikipedia existed.

Honest Caveats

“First encyclopaedia” and “first in English” are both false. Harris (1704) and Chambers (1728) came first. Use “oldest continuously published”.

The George III plates story is legend, traceable to a 1958 popular history and contradicted by surviving copies.

The “Woman” entry had a cross-reference. Brief, yes; four words, not quite.

The anti-Encyclopédie motive is disputed, and probably a later gloss added in a third-edition dedication.

Authorship of the “new plan” is contested between Macfarquhar and Smellie, with a Tytler claim on the margins.

Small figures vary by source. The first number is dated 6 or 10 December 1768; page counts for the first edition run from about 2,391 to 2,659; Macfarquhar’s birth year, about 1745, is uncertain.

The 2005 Nature study is contested. Britannica disputed both method and conclusions; the journal stood firm. Cite it with that argument attached.

The Scottish claim is about origin, not ownership. Britannica has been American-owned since 1901 and Chicago-based since 1920, and nothing on this page suggests otherwise.