Encyclopædia Britannica

LEncyclopædia Britannica (usually spelled with a E in the place of the original æ) is a Encyclopédie in language English E. Of British origin, it is nowadays published with the the United States.

History

Founded in Scotland at the 18th century, it was initially published in Edinburgh by Adam and Charles Black. With the difference of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and D' Alembert which was at the origin of the concept, Britannica was politically preserving.

The publication moved with London and was associated with the Times in the Années 1870, for its 9th and 10th editions. For the 11th edition, the encyclopedia was associated with the Université of Cambridge. The trade Mark and the rights of publication were yielded after the 11th edition to Sears Roebuck and the encyclopedia moved with Chicago, in the Illinois. The current editor is Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. , also editor of the Encyclopædia Universalis, and which has the world trade mark “Britannica”.

In 2004, the most complete version of Encyclopædia Britannica contains approximately 120.000 articles is 44 million words. It is published on Papier (32 volumes, 65 000 articles. Price: 1 395 USD in 2006), on Internet (120 000 articles; the summaries of the articles are accessible freely, the full text being accessible realizing a subscription from 10 USD per month or 60 USD per annum for the individual subscribers), on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM (more 100 000 articles, 50 USD).

The current version of Britannica was written by more than 4.000 contributors, of which many academics like Milton Friedman, Carl Sagan and Michael DeBakey. Thirty-five percent of the contents of the encyclopedia was rewritten during the two last years. Ted Pappas is the current director of the publication.

History of the editions

The first edition on CD-ROM is appeared in 1994.

Position of Encyclopædia Britannica towards Wikipédia

The British scientific magazine Nature published in December 2005 a study relating to 42 scientific articles whose conclusions are that the error rate is nearly 32 percent higher on Wikipédia. This article was the object, on behalf of Britannica, of an answer which involved another of them. Britannica disputes in particular 64 of the 123 errors and omissions allotted by the study of Nature.