
After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses - trustfundbaby
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
======
grellas
It is easy to disparage the Encyclopedia Britannica from a modern perspective
- out-of-step, overpriced, outmaneuvered by competitors - but there is a great
sadness here at the demise of something that represented an effort by western
scholars to "capture the world's knowledge." Imagine assembling a "A" team of
scholars and scientists, getting them to make substantial, substantive
contributions in each of their respective areas of expertise, and publishing
the results under the guidance of a top editorial board. The results echoed in
the western world at the highest levels for no less than two centuries,
culminating in a famous 1911 edition that was widely regarded as the pinnacle
in assembled human knowledge to that time - something to be marveled at. For
years, collectors paid a great premium to buy the 1911 edition, just for that
reason. Even in the period leading up to the 1960s, the EB was a staple in
most every western home where parents valued education and academic
achievement for their kids. Whole hordes of door-to-door salesmen supported
their families very comfortably just by selling this particular product.

So, yes, the EB became kind of laughable with its clumsy marketing efforts and
awkward efforts to adapt to modern technology in the past couple of decades,
but be kind to its memory. It was one of the great attempts in all history to
try to do what many dream of doing today through the internet and the
advantages of the digital age: limited by the resources of that day, for sure,
but an amazing achievement nonetheless. There is something special that has
died here and, if only for old time's sake, we can mourn its passing.

~~~
rhplus
I think the most notable aspect of the 1911 edition - and every edition before
and since - is that each is still around, distinct and readable. I don't yet
know whether people will be able to reference a '2011 edition' of Wikipedia in
a hundred years time. I'm aware of various archival projects, but unless they
receive continued support, we could very easily be at risk of losing vast
checkpoints in the history of humankind. The written word on paper and stone
has been proven to last hundreds of years in general and thousands in rarer
cases. Magnetic and electronic storage is yet to prove itself in that respect.

~~~
nakkiel
Well, download a dump of Wikipedia and be done with it. When you say "still
around", you should know that digital bits have the potential to be around
forever while paper books require a lot of efforts to keep around just a
couple of decades.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservation_%28library_and_arc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservation_%28library_and_archival_science%29)

I have an encyclopedia that's now 120 (or so) at home and I don't read it
anymore because I'm too affraid to damage it. It's sad because it's gold mine
of stereotypes and good words on blacks and gays.

I think your point regarding "checkpoints" is more interesting but still falls
moot because Wikipedia uses versionning. If you really cared that much about
digital data you would do what you are doing with your book: keeping it.

~~~
mnl
Well, they have that potential as long as the copyright holders won't go out
of business, consumers stop viewing content as disposable goods and hence keep
copies... and the FBI stops closing sharing sites. Now seriously, you're
wrong. I've got a book from 1640 and looks fine: as long as they're printed on
acid free paper they should last for centuries. Check your digital media after
two decades... Hard drives/floppies from 1992 are mostly gone, CD/DVDs won't
last that long because of decomposition of dye. Backup tapes, good luck with
that. Now, go check which sites from the 90s keep their old files (thank God
for the Internet Archive). People take for granted that every bit will stay
forever, that's delusional. We have to keep moving them, if everybody stops
copying a content it will be lost in less than 50 years. Now, if you think
that every book with stereotypes should be discarded, that's sad. We have the
responsibility to preserve history, and the moral duty to challenge what we
consider wrong with our reason. To wipe it off, that's censorship and a
recurrent disease of totalitarian mindsets.

~~~
nakkiel
No matter the quality of the paper, it will eventually decay. If you can still
read your book from 1640 that's really great but realistically how common is
that? There are a lot of environmental factors that affect paper duration and
in many areas of the world, a decade is already very long for paper (have
worked with an NGO based in Thailand that has 15 years of archives; the first
5 years are hardly readable)

As I said, digital data has the _potential_ to exist forever. Digital data is
independent from the media. A media is mostly cheap and disposable.

> Now, if you think that every book with stereotypes should be discarded,
> that's sad.

I certainly didn't mean that (cf. "gold mine").

> We have the responsibility to preserve history, and the moral duty to
> challenge what we consider wrong with our reason.

My point exactly. Which is why my comment invited the op to get a data dump
and archive it properly. We all know that paper is sensible and would be
careful for storage. We need to build and apply a similar set of precautions
to store our digital data.

> To wipe it off, that's censorship and a recurrent disease of totalitarian
> mindsets.

Definitely OT.

~~~
mnl
"My" book isn't particularly resilient, it's just the oldest one I've got at
home. It was covered in mud, maybe that's why it was the only one not stolen
from a very old family house of ours. After all that abuse, it still works,
and as a passive device, has needed no energy to keep its contents for 370
years without any change in format or computing platform able to read it every
other decade or so. Try any decent library, very old books use to be in the
basement, you'd be amazed. It's a bit embarrassing having to remind you that
at least before the 1990s people used old books. Most of the Archives have
survived without any special care for centuries (this one is a great example:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo_de_Indias>). Of course, they didn't use
toner neither chlorine bleached paper.

> We all know that paper is sensible (...)

"My point exactly".

------
286c8cb04bda
_> Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000
have been stored in a warehouse until they can be purchased._

I suspect it won't take them very long to sell those copies after this
announcement.

~~~
blahedo
I thought the same thing, and I'm a little surprised they didn't do a larger
print run for the last edition.

------
pjscott
It's interesting how gradual history can seem, even when we're in the middle
of huge changes. Online sources of information just kept getting better, too
slowly to really notice, and print encyclopedias seemed less and less
relevant, but it wasn't until today that this really hit me. _The
Encyclopaedia Britannica is no longer being printed._ That's kind of shocking,
though in retrospect it seems almost inevitable.

~~~
electromagnetic
Indeed history is gradual, but the thing that shocks me about this is that in
3,000 years when our successors look back, is this the period they're going to
think our society ended?

Is their society going to be digging through the buried remains of silicon
valley and saying "their civilization seemed to disappear when they started
mass producing these 3.5" and 2.5" boxes containing sheets of metal.

It seems far fetched, but when all our data is digital, how long before we
have a "burning of the library of Alexandria" moment. Thankfully all the
companies ripping wikipedia articles and serving them with adverts are
actually helping avoid a moment like this. Multiple-redundancy is likely the
only method to prevent huge amounts of information from being lost.

~~~
pjscott
Redundancy is easier than ever. To use your example of Wikipedia, there are a
few sites around the world that mirror the periodic data dumps from Wikipedia,
and if you feel like donating about 7.7 GB to the preservation of history,
there are torrents:

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents>

On that note, this is probably the best general discussion I've seen of
archiving our digital data:

<http://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs>

~~~
dubya
The scenario where paper seems to have a serious advantage over digital is
when people disappear or lose interest in maintaining digital copies for a few
decades. Paper just sits, relatively inert, in libraries or boxes in peoples
attics. Meanwhile, finding a reader for the Jazz disk with your thesis has
become impossible.

~~~
pjscott
This is an argument for large-scale backups. If you're already maintaining
around 100 TB of assorted backup data, the extra effort of preserving another
megabyte of data is negligible, even if you don't consciously care about that
particular megabyte.

My thesis is in Dropbox, and I emailed it to my GMail address. Both companies
seem likely to faithfully back up my thesis for the indefinite future, because
it would literally be more effort for them _not_ to back it up. I also have it
on a USB drive somewhere, but I forgot where I put it. Incidentally, I also
made a printed copy, but I have no idea where it is.

~~~
dubya
I did GMail-myself backups before Dropbox was around, and now have stuff on a
Time Machine backup as well. But the networked backups are dependent on Google
and Dropbox actively maintaining their servers for me, which it makes sense
for them to do, but it's hard to depend on. If Google lost all traces of me
today, that would be fine because I have a local backup, but it would be no
big deal to them because I'm not a paying customer. As far as I know, they
don't even have a legal obligation to maintain my data. If I have a photo or
text I want to be available in 30 years, I think that printing it out and
sticking on a bookshelf is much more reliable than depending on a nebulous
third party or trusting that I won't inadvertently lose a set of backups.

------
mynameishere
Back in the day, it was a great product. My family had an edition endorsed (in
the first pages) by Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon, and I can't
calculate how many hours I spent leafing through the pages. I guess that's
been replaced by Wikipedia's "Random article" link, but with EB you never got
crap about Pokemon.

~~~
waterlesscloud
There was huge value in thumbing through these as a child. We could never
afford the set, but I had used copies of individual volumes and I spent many,
many hours reading random topics. You just don't get that kind of discovery in
an online version. Maybe you could, but you don't.

~~~
bartread
Seriously? YOU don't? You've obviously never experienced the Wikipedia death
spiral: 30 browser tabs open all on unrelated Wikipedia pages. It was
dangerously close to an addiction for me at one point and the amount of random
crap I now know it irritates me I'm still so poor at pub quizes. There's
probably some Godwin's Law equivalent where once you've opened a tab relating
to Hitler or the Nazis, having started off on an article about Bengal Tigers,
you know it's time for bed.

~~~
waterlesscloud
The problem is that you're selecting the topics. The value of a physical
encyclopedia is that they've selected the topics and you're browsing them at
random.

~~~
colomon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random>

------
yarone
I recall reading a story (couldn't find it just now) about how Bill Gates
tried unsuccessfully to license the Britannica content to create his digital
encyclopedia product. Instead, Microsoft cobbled together assets themselves
and built Encarta (1993).

Microsoft proceeded to trounce the print Encyclopedia business by creating a
better product that severely undercut the traditional players.

Here we are, 2012, finally Britannica is dead. That took longer than expected.

~~~
camiller
One thing I remember about Encarta back when the Pentium 75mHz was king, If
you copied a passage of text and pasted it into MS word, it automatically
generated a footnote entry. To this day I've never seen any other software do
that. (Not saying there isn't any, I've just not seen it)

~~~
pnathan
There was (is?) some software called PC Study Bible that did/does that.

------
ChristianMarks
At least they had the good sense not to form the Encyclopaedia Industry
Association of America (EIAA)--an organization whose charter would have been
to sue random Wikipedia users.

------
fiatmoney
Why not move to an on-demand printing model, I wonder? I can understand not
devoting a large amounts of resources towards typesetting and storing new
editions, but it does seem (at least from the comments here, and anecdotally
elsewhere) that people enjoy older editions as objects d'art. There might very
well be a market for selling, eg, "new" 1912 editions if you can avoid the
warehousing overhead and ship them direct.

Licensing opportunity, perhaps?

------
cpeterso
It's too bad Encyclopaedia Britannica won't collaborate with Wikipedia. The
company could bring their authors, reviewers, content, and experience from a
sinking ship to an information platform that is successful but could be even
better.

~~~
colomon
"About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee that includes access to
the full database of articles, videos, original documents and access to mobile
applications." That's $35 million a year, which is not as good as the best
year of the print version (which would have $150 million in sales if I'm
figuring correctly), but is still not too shabby.

~~~
Domenic_S
Books don't need a cadre of software engineers pushing out updates for iOS +
every Android device, video transcoding licenses, account servicing, servers,
an 800-number staffed with tech support...

The book model was far better.

~~~
colomon
Do you have any actual stats to back that up?

Software doesn't need to be printed in 32 large, luxurious volumes and sold by
a cadre of door-to-door salesmen.

------
darrenkopp
$1,400 to buy it in book form. That may be part of the reason it's not being
printed anymore.

~~~
edwardy20
I wonder if selling the most popular Wikipedia articles in printed form for
around $100 would have a market.

~~~
troymc
It's already being done. I stumble across books like that in Amazon from time
to time. The reviews usually give it away.

------
lukev
Well damn. Now I feel I need to go out and buy a copy, so I don't get sent all
the way back to the stone age in the event of a massive solar flare or nuclear
war or zombie apocalypse.

~~~
mojuba
I wonder what technologies and goods would a survivor be able to recreate
based on Britannica alone.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That sounds like a gameshow pitch in the making.

------
patrickgzill
I recommend the 1968 or so, EB editions if you are looking for an older one.
The 1972 or 1973 was the last of the classic style ones, after that they went
with Micropedia/Macropedia etc. which is not what you want.

The articles are well written, and if covering pre-20th century history,
literature, or other topics, should still be excellent introductions.

~~~
rootbear
I think the copy at my parents' house is about 1968. I remember when I was
young and we got it. I guess I'll have to duke it out with my sister for who
gets it!

------
joejohnson
Right after I read this article, I read the wikipedia article on
Encyclopedias. I didn't actually know a lot about them.

Edit: Typo.

------
Alex3917
Looks like Britannica got flushed down the public toilet:

[http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2004/11/the-
faith-b...](http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2004/11/the-faith-based-
encyclopedia.html)

------
seclorum
What a pity. I wonder if they'll return to publishing when it becomes cheaper
to print iPad-like devices in the near future?

I personally believe that EB had a place in the world. For example, I'd
happily pay a few thousand Euro's/$/Pounds for "the complete, historical
Encyclopaedia Britannica" that contains every single release of EB back to the
beginning. The context of historical discovery that would provide would be
amazing.

Of course, it'd have to be digital.

(Disclaimer: I collect old dictionaries for the same reason: culture context
as things change over the decades..)

------
kpanghmc
Sad, but inevitable. I owned a copy growing up and it was an invaluable source
of information. I remember flipping through the volumes and marveling at how
much information I had at my fingertips. For whatever reason my computer has
never given me that same feeling of awe and wonder. There's just something
about staring at a bookshelf filled with those tomes of knowledge that
triggers my thirst for information.

------
Jun8
I never really coveted EB but I promised myself that the moment I strike it
rich with my startup I will order the print edition of the Oxford English
Dictionary: the 20 volume 2nd edition set is just $995
([http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/?view=usa&ci=01986...](http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/?view=usa&ci=0198611862)).

------
jsyedidia
You can get the complete EB on the iPad for $1.99 per month.

------
feralchimp
I'd just like to note that, as with the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary,
the fact that the _publisher_ is no longer going to print future editions does
not accurately predict that future editions will be unobtainable in print
format.

You just won't be able to get them on Amazon, for 4-figures.

------
mef
If you don't feel or understand the sadness others express in regards to this
announcement, pretend it's hundreds of years in the future and you hear that
Wikipedia is finally shutting down, having become an irrelevant artifact of
the past.

------
mnl
Yet $1400 is a reasonable price... There is a distinctive pleasure in reading
a printed encyclopaedia that convenient on-line browsing can't fulfil. Old
Macropaedia editions are still useful, I prefer their summaries about physics
than those of Wikipedia for instance. I'd love that everything in this world
were digitalized, but it's not yet and maybe it will never be. Despite the
efforts of many people there are huge amounts of relevant knowledge available
on paper only, it makes me sad to realise that this obvious fact -and all
those sources- are almost forgotten now.

------
zeruch
I never used EB (I had a set of World Book Encyclopedias) but the thought is
the same...it is a weird sense of finality that comes with knowing something
you grew up with that was so oddly reliable is fading away due to technology
that provides things it doesn't (fast iterations on rapidly changing data) but
lacks others now possibly perceived as less valuable or assumed without
testing the veracity (perceived up front accuracy/fact-checking).

------
tpowell
How in the hell is this just now happening if ENCARTA was discontinued over
three years ago?

Seems like this should have taken place ten years ago or more.

~~~
troymc
There was still some demand for the printed books, and apparently it was
enough to generate some profit. They really are beautiful-looking books. You
couldn't decorate your study with Encarta.

On a related note, according to Wikipedia (!): "Microsoft had originally
approached Encyclopædia Britannica, the gold standard of encyclopedias for
over a century, in the 1980s, but it declined, believing its print media sales
would be hurt; however, the Benton Foundation was forced to sell Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc. at below book value in 1996 when the print sales could no
longer compete with Encarta..."

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta>

------
cont4gious
This is a fantastic example of a company embracing technology (or more
generally newer forms of business) and not holding on to the "old way" of
doing business.

The fact that their printed volumes account for a negligible amount of their
revenue shows that this wasn't even a spur of the moment decision, they saw
the writing on the wall a long time ago and planned accordingly.

~~~
rwmj
It's a terrible example (or perhaps a "fantastic" example of a company
avoiding reality for eons). The writing has been on the wall for EB for at
least 15 years, in fact there was even a book written about it:

[http://www.amazon.com/Blown-Bits-Economics-Information-
Trans...](http://www.amazon.com/Blown-Bits-Economics-Information-
Transforms/dp/087584877X)

How do we know they're even going to make money now?

~~~
meric
"About 85 percent of revenues come from selling curriculum products in
subjects like math, science and the English language; the remainder comes from
subscriptions to the Web site, the company said."

They weren't avoiding reality. It looks like they've planned this years ago,
but kept printing encyclopaedias while they were still profitable.

Let's say after the year 2015, demand for non-tablets will begin to reduce by
50% per year. Does that mean companies should stop making non-tablets in the
year 2015? For some, maybe. What if several competitors has already exited the
market (as had happened here), should you exit too? If your competitors left
that means although while the pie has gotten smaller, you're getting a larger
slice of it. Stay while it's profitable.

------
Moschops
Hopefully the electronic edition will keep going for the foreseeable future;
replacing its effect ourselves would be a real pain. Wikipedia just does not
replace it; Wikipedia aims to presents consensus of sources on the web (even
when it is broadly acknowledged that consensus is wrong), EB aims to present
correctness.

------
dfan
I still have my grandfather's 1911 set, which I am trying to still cherish
after recently discovering that the whole thing is now on the internet.

My affection for physical objects like books and CDs (and I have acquired a
LOT of them) has become increasingly anachronistic, even just over the last
five years.

------
pnathan
That's a real shame. I guess I had better look around to see if I can get one.
There's still nothing comparable to an encyclopedia for being able to browse
interesting topics that are reliable.

------
verelo
Its sad to see, and in another way a little scary. I sure hope we have enough
dinosaurs to burn to keep the Internet running. Long live "The Cloud".

~~~
DilipJ
I'm sure more carbon is being used in cutting down the trees to turn into
paper, and then shipping all of that paper to customers.

~~~
moheeb
Actually chainsaws are pretty efficient.

I say there is no way more "carbon" is used shipping a few thousand books than
powering the entire internet.

~~~
DilipJ
you think it's more efficient to ship everyone an entire set of encyclopedias
than to keep wikipedia's servers running?

------
starfox
“Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a
better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more
expansive and it has multimedia.”

The future is clearly <http://www.britannica.com>

~~~
rwmj
The future is so clearly _not_ britannica.com. That site doesn't even work
without javascript, and where the heck is the "Edit" button?

~~~
xxpor
I think it's ridiculous in this day and age for people to expect webpages to
work without JS.

~~~
drucken
Oh, really...

In an age,

* where the Internet can be seen on ever increasing number of diverse devices

* where every day people discover that every additional layer of software complexity adds security vulnerabilities

* where the default installation of even many existing heavily used browsers, for both personal and business, have everything except html and stylesheets disabled, especially for new sites

* where some/many people may wish to choose to use your site in its most bare form possible, including command line users

* etc.

you choose to ignore all of these usage scenarios by not even having a
graceful fallback for your site?

Thankfully, most web administrators and developers are not as short-sighted as
you, even most start-ups!

One more thing: if a new site, even one that has been heavilty recommended to
me, does not provide even basic information without scripting or has a
horrible front-page with a default NoScript Firefox installation, I treat it
as I would a spam site and I immediately desist from using the site and ignore
the link.

You will not waste my time with lack of basic Web competence and awareness.

~~~
xxpor
First of all, calm down.

I think people disabling JS for security should be willing to accept the
downfalls.

"where the default installation of even many existing heavily used browsers,
for both personal and business, have everything except html and stylesheets
disabled, especially for new sites"

I don't know what you're talking about here. I've never seen a default install
of any browser (on a desktop) except IE in Windows server have JS off by
default

"where some/many people may wish to choose to use your site in its most bare
form possible, including command line users"

I will grant command line users should be accommodated where they will be
expected to be a large proportion of your users (linux install instructions,
for example) otherwise, give me a break. Why should I take my time working for
.01% of users using a command line.

Now, I don't think this means that people should be using JS when it's not
necessary, like if your page is mostly text. But all of the use cases you cite
are a small minority of the users of most sites.

------
TriviaCrowd
The World Book Encyclopedia will live on!

------
larrywright
Raise your hand if you thought they had already stopped printing it.

/me raises his hand

------
Helianthus
It's weird, but I kinda wouldn't mind having a set of the last Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The zenith of 244 years of tradition, an emblem of the transition
of our knowledge to an online space, and still very functional in a quaint
way...

~~~
astine
I wonder what it would be worth in 40 years?

~~~
WalterBright
I have some old sets of books over 100 years old. They're still fairly
worthless.

