Encyclopaedia Britannica

[bandit957]

Remember the Encyclopaedia Britannica?

My brother actually won the complete 1981 set in a spelling bee. My family didn't actually go out and buy a set, because we weren't made of money.

One volume of it was called the Propaedia, and I could never figure out the purpose of it. It looked like it was put together by a bunch of professors just to show off how smart they were.

I remember each volume had one or two blank pages at the beginning and end that were all wrinkled. The books actually came that way. I also remember that a lot of the articles were way out of date. And why did they spell it 'encyclopaedia'? I think the spine of each volume actually ran the 'a' and 'e' together.

When I first saw this encyclopedia set, the first thing I looked up was bubble gum, because I thought it would be funny. But I don't think bubble gum itself had an entry. I think the encyclopedia confused it with taffy.

Before we had this set, we had a few volumes of smaller encyclopedia sets that we found at yard sales, but I don't know why yard sales only sold a few volumes of a set.

[bandit957]

Also, I remember around 1990, they ran these lengthy TV commercials with this really nerdy teenager talking to an off-screen narrator. I think MTV showed these commercials all the time.

They would show the phone number on the screen, and the kid would say, "And there it is." That's what inspired that '90s expression.

[Big John]

^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxwin9XFbnQ

[Scott5114]

And why did they spell it 'encyclopaedia'? I think the spine of each volume actually ran the 'a' and 'e' together.

The æ ligature is something that made its way into English via Latin loan words. Other words spelled this way include dæmon and æther. These words retain the "ae" spelling in British English, but have been simplified to either A or E in American English (as in demon and ether). There is also an Å" ligature that likewise gets simplified (examples include homÅ"opathic and phÅ"nix, which in American English are spelled homeopathic and Arizona respectively).

Norwegian still retains Æ as a full letter of its alphabet, so Trafikkalfabetet, the Norwegian road sign font, has full specifications for both Æ and æ.

[bulldog1979]

My parents have a set of Collier's Encyclopedia that they bought when I was in 4th grade. They bought the annual yearbooks for quite a while too.

[JayhawkCO]

We were a World Book family.

[hbelkins]

I preferred World Book myself. My elementary school library had both, but I liked World Book. We bought a World Book set in the early 1970s and got a couple of the annual updates before canceling the subscription to them. They're boxed up in the basement somewhere now. Dad kept them on a bookshelf from the time we moved into our new house until his death.

[formulanone]

Our family bought World Book series in 1986, and it was a decent starting point for a lot of papers and some curiosities.

I don't think I've looked though single one by the time I graduated high school six years later, but I know they're all on a few shelves in my mother's home, right next to the TV.

[Rothman]

We had the Britannica.  Supposedly, there was a report writing service, where if you purchased the set that you could request a paper written on a topic of your choosing.  Should have taken advantage of that in high school.

I also liked their annual volumes that summarized everything that happened in a year.

[catch22]

My parents bought a EB set in 1961.  The 24 volumes came with a "free" bookcase to hold them all, along with the large EB World Atlas that slid into a slot in the top.  After us kids moved out, they sat unused in my parent's living room until 2003 when my mother decided to sell the house and move into a rather small apartment.  So, I wound up with the set and they're here in my home office.  I rarely look at them these days, but I can't bring myself to toss them.

We also got the annual update volumes for a few years, but those were nowhere to be found when we emptied out the house.  There was also a two-volume multi-language dictionary which did survive.

In the ancient days before Google, Wikipedia, et al., they were the best things for research when doing papers for school.

[kkt]

I have an Encyclopaedia Britannica from the early 1990s.  The first couple of pages getting wrinkled is a common problem with large books on lightweight paper.  They try to print less important things on those pages.

Yes, the propaedia is, um, only occassionally useful.  You could use it to find related topics around what you were interested in - although there are probably better ways to approach that.

At least everything in the encyclopaedia was looked at by professional editors, instead of depending on amateurs and good will like wikipedia.

[iowahighways]

On a recent episode of The Chase, a contestant mentioned that she read the Britannica as a child, while some of the Chasers preferred the World Book. My encyclopedia set growing up was the Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia from 1987, which was sold in supermarkets: 9 cents for the first volume, and about $3-5 for each volume thereafter. I kept it until about 15 years ago, when I thought it had become too outdated. Yet my in-laws still have their 1988 World Book set to this day.

Also, for those who don't know, that kid in the commercials for "the library that never closes" was Stan Freberg's son, Donovan.

[amberjns]

Oh, the memories of the Encyclopaedia Britannica! It takes me back to my childhood days when knowledge was sought through those hefty volumes. As a curious youngster, I would spend hours flipping through the pages, immersing myself in a world of information. As I grew older, I realized the limitations of print encyclopedias, and the internet became my primary source of information. One of these sources is this website https://graduateway.com/essay-type/critical-thinking/ which offers diverse essay types, including critical thinking. This resource is valuable for honing my analytical skills and expanding my perspectives. Sure, some articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica were outdated, but that never deterred my thirst for learning. It will forever hold a special place in my heart, reminding me of the wonders that await in the pursuit of understanding the world around us.

[frankenroad]

We had the World Book as well.  Probably bought in 1963 or 1964.  I know it was no later than 1964, because I remember very distinctly writing in Herbert Hoover's death year (1964) after he died.
Every year, my parents would get the yearbook as well. 

Being the nerd I was (and still am), I would sit down with a volume of the encyclopedia and read for hours.

After my parents died, I tried to find a home for the set, but no one would take them - and the recycling center would not take them either, so they went to the landfill.   Last year, a friend of mine opened a bar with a retro theme, and he has a complete set of the World Book encyclopedias on a high shelf above the bar.  Too bad the timing wasn't better - he could have had mine.

[SectorZ]

On a recent episode of The Chase, a contestant mentioned that she read the Britannica as a child, while some of the Chasers preferred the World Book. My encyclopedia set growing up was the Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia from 1987, which was sold in supermarkets: 9 cents for the first volume, and about $3-5 for each volume thereafter. I kept it until about 15 years ago, when I thought it had become too outdated. Yet my in-laws still have their 1988 World Book set to this day.

Also, for those who don't know, that kid in the commercials for "the library that never closes" was Stan Freberg's son, Donovan.

My family got that Funk & Wagnalls one the same exact way in the late 80's. I think my mother donated it about a decade ago, but hung onto the annual news and science books that come out.

[jgb191]

I had a couple of books of Compton's Encyclopedia, but my schools all had World Book.

In the late 1990s, advances in computer technology allowed me to switch from the physical volumes to an electronic version by utilizing a simple storage device called a Compact Disk (CDs for those of you too young to remember those times) containing the software Encyclopedia Encarta (1997 edition), where all you had to do was type the subject you wanted to read about and the computer pulls up the article for you without having to look for a book within a volume and you didn't have to flip though the hundreds of pages to find that given subject.

[Roadgeekteen]

I never had encyclopedias at home- I am young enough that the internet already existed as a big thing since my early childhood. My schools over the years, did often have a set of encyclopedias, but I believe that worldbook is the brand that they always had.

[oscar]

My parents have a set of Collier's Encyclopedia that they bought when I was in 4th grade. They bought the annual yearbooks for quite a while too.

My family, too (though I think we took a pass on the annual yearbooks). I remember fondly a Collier's photo of a giant water bug killing a frog; a photocopy is still somewhere in my paper files back home. Someone else in college was similarly smitten by that photo, which he copied and taped to all the rooms in my dorm and perhaps others.

[elsmere241]

My mother won a set of Encyclopedia International on Jeopardy in the early 1970s, that I grew up on at home.  The schools all had World Book.  One of my relatives had World Book, Childcraft, and the Childcraft Annual.  I was able to find a couple of the better Childcraft Annuals (The Magic of Words and Mathemagic) in the free bin at 2nd & Charles not long ago and I took them home.

I inherited that Encyclopedia International after my mother died, but didn't hold on to them for very long.  If we had kids, we might get World Book or something like that for them.

[lepidopteran]

We had the Encyclopædia Britannica, probably the 1961 edition.  Complete with the "thistle" logo.  Like catch22 mentioned, it had its own custom bookcase, with a slot at the top for the World Atlas.  (We also had the "Book of the Year" for the first six years.)  Though oddly enough, Volume 24 had an atlas as well, along with an index of the other volumes, plus an index to the atlas itself.  The spine of the book boldly listed it all in order:
TEXT INDEX
     ATLAS
ATLAS INDEX
Of course, the bigger atlas was more extensive and detailed than the one in the index volume. But neither atlas displayed many roads or highways -- they primarily showed railroads!  It was a little out of date, though; for instance, the New Jersey page showed the Hightstown & Pemberton still connected to the Camden and Amboy, when the junction had been severed by the construction of the NJ Turnpike, which opened 8 years before that edition.

Unlike many other encyclopedias, Britannica made sure to have each volume nearly the same thickness as the others.  Therefore, they had to list the keywords that bounded each volume on the spine.  And in this edition, they truncated the keywords to mostly meaningless words, e.g., Volume 15 covered "Mushroom" to "Ozonolysis" (a process in organic chemistry); the spine shortened it to "MUSHR to OZON".  One that I found intriguing was Volume 11 with "GUIZ to HYDROX" -- one of my favorite kinds of cookie!  (The actual keyword was the chemical compound "Hydroxylamine".)  In any event, at age 5 or so I memorized the whole set of partial keywords, and drove people nuts reciting them from memory!

But as a kid, the articles in Britannica were only marginally useful to me, since they were written in what I perceived as an arcane language.  One thing I did enjoy, though, were the picture pages.  Ya see, the regular pages were of a darker, thin consistency, just a step above newsprint.  But every now and then there were special pages of pictures on thick, glossy, coated paper.  The pictures were numbered, with matching captions at the bottom of the page.  Sometimes, instead of numbers, the captions were prefaced by their position, e.g., "Top right"; I suspect those were holdovers from earlier editions.

As a proto-roadgeek, one set of picture pages I really enjoyed were under the keyword "Bridge".  With photos ranging from rope spans in Tibet to the Ponte di Rialto in Venice, Italy, they also had at least 4 New York City structures shown, including the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Queensboro, the Bronx-Whitestone, and the Outerbridge Crossing.  The caption for the latter confused me, and might actually have been a misprint -- it read "The Outerbridge crossing the Arthur Kill river..."

We also had the far more kid-friendly "Golden Book Encyclopedia" from 1960.  This had 16 thin, well-illustrated volumes with succinct, easy-to-read articles.  These volumes, too, were each around the same thickness.  The front cover listed the keywords in full while the spine just used 1 or 2 letters, e.g., Volume 5 was "Daguerreotype to Epiphyte"; the narrow binding just read "D-Ep".  One unsung feature of this encyclopedia was how the covers displayed a small collage of objects representing articles in each volume.

And of course, at school there was the World Book.  Here, the books were custom sized so they could handle only one letter, or a group of letters.  Only the letter C had enough articles that it was subdivided: C-Ch, and Ci-Cz.  At some point in the run, probably in the early '70, the letter S volume was divided as well: S-Sn, So-Sz.

World Book's yearbook had a unique feature.  Each year, several articles were completely rewritten.  With each new article, they had a little sticker that you were instructed to place on the original encyclopedia article for reference. (I think there were also stickers for notable events relating to existing articles.) They also had "Science Year", a separate yearbook devoted solely to scientific discoveries and advancements of that year.

[bandit957]

But as a kid, the articles in Britannica were only marginally useful to me, since they were written in what I perceived as an arcane language.  One thing I did enjoy, though, were the picture pages.  Ya see, the regular pages were of a darker, thin consistency, just a step above newsprint.  But every now and then there were special pages of pictures on thick, glossy, coated paper.

I remember something like this. I think they may have had special color pages for the periodic table and flags of countries around the world. But that might be a different book I'm thinking of.

World Book's yearbook had a unique feature.  Each year, several articles were completely rewritten.  With each new article, they had a little sticker that you were instructed to place on the original encyclopedia article for reference.

I don't remember this. That basically ruins the book.

I just remembered that someone stuck bubble gum in a World Book encyclopedia in high school. I think they blew a bubble and closed the book on it. But somehow the librarian was able to remove it without ruining the book.

[catch22]

We had the Encyclopædia Britannica, probably the 1961 edition.  Complete with the "thistle" logo.  Like catch22 mentioned, it had its own custom bookcase, with a slot at the top for the World Atlas.  (We also had the "Book of the Year" for the first six years.)  Though oddly enough, Volume 24 had an atlas as well, along with an index of the other volumes, plus an index to the atlas itself.  The spine of the book boldly listed it all in order:
TEXT INDEX
     ATLAS
ATLAS INDEX
Of course, the bigger atlas was more extensive and detailed than the one in the index volume. But neither atlas displayed many roads or highways -- they primarily showed railroads!  It was a little out of date, though; for instance, the New Jersey page showed the Hightstown & Pemberton still connected to the Camden and Amboy, when the junction had been severed by the construction of the NJ Turnpike, which opened 8 years before that edition.

Unlike many other encyclopedias, Britannica made sure to have each volume nearly the same thickness as the others.  Therefore, they had to list the keywords that bounded each volume on the spine.  And in this edition, they truncated the keywords to mostly meaningless words, e.g., Volume 15 covered "Mushroom" to "Ozonolysis" (a process in organic chemistry); the spine shortened it to "MUSHR to OZON".  One that I found intriguing was Volume 11 with "GUIZ to HYDROX" -- one of my favorite kinds of cookie!  (The actual keyword was the chemical compound "Hydroxylamine".)  In any event, at age 5 or so I memorized the whole set of partial keywords, and drove people nuts reciting them from memory!

But as a kid, the articles in Britannica were only marginally useful to me, since they were written in what I perceived as an arcane language.  One thing I did enjoy, though, were the picture pages.  Ya see, the regular pages were of a darker, thin consistency, just a step above newsprint.  But every now and then there were special pages of pictures on thick, glossy, coated paper.  The pictures were numbered, with matching captions at the bottom of the page.  Sometimes, instead of numbers, the captions were prefaced by their position, e.g., "Top right"; I suspect those were holdovers from earlier editions.

As a proto-roadgeek, one set of picture pages I really enjoyed were under the keyword "Bridge".  With photos ranging from rope spans in Tibet to the Ponte di Rialto in Venice, Italy, they also had at least 4 New York City structures shown, including the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Queensboro, the Bronx-Whitestone, and the Outerbridge Crossing.  The caption for the latter confused me, and might actually have been a misprint -- it read "The Outerbridge crossing the Arthur Kill river..."

We also had the far more kid-friendly "Golden Book Encyclopedia" from 1960.  This had 16 thin, well-illustrated volumes with succinct, easy-to-read articles.  These volumes, too, were each around the same thickness.  The front cover listed the keywords in full while the spine just used 1 or 2 letters, e.g., Volume 5 was "Daguerreotype to Epiphyte"; the narrow binding just read "D-Ep".  One unsung feature of this encyclopedia was how the covers displayed a small collage of objects representing articles in each volume.

And of course, at school there was the World Book.  Here, the books were custom sized so they could handle only one letter, or a group of letters.  Only the letter C had enough articles that it was subdivided: C-Ch, and Ci-Cz.  At some point in the run, probably in the early '70, the letter S volume was divided as well: S-Sn, So-Sz.

World Book's yearbook had a unique feature.  Each year, several articles were completely rewritten.  With each new article, they had a little sticker that you were instructed to place on the original encyclopedia article for reference. (I think there were also stickers for notable events relating to existing articles.) They also had "Science Year", a separate yearbook devoted solely to scientific discoveries and advancements of that year.

I loved all the shiny picture pages too.

I dug my copy of Volume 24 out of cold storage and took a couple of pictures.

[Scott5114]

Hey, what kind of useless US map is that? Greetings from OKΛA!

[Roadgeekteen]

Hey, what kind of useless US map is that? Greetings from OKΛA!

The plains states look very compressed here

[lepidopteran]

Yep, that's the edition we had!  One minor difference -- the binding had that brown color all around, instead of just where the print is.  World Book also had different color schemes available; I think most schools used the red-and-blue binding, while the version for the living room might have been a cream and earth-tone mix.

Again, the map of the USA shows railroad lines, many of which have since been removed.  I think the larger atlas had more lines shown, and even had abbreviations of the railroad company names.