Long before Wikipedia and smartphones, three enterprising Scotsmen published the first Encyclopaedia Britannica. The year was 1768. The first edition of three volumes was largely devoted to scientific subjects. There were more than two hundred pages about surgery and forty pages of text covering midwifery. The illustrations were graphic. Consequently, King George III ordered citizens to rip the offending pages from their sets.
In the U.S., George Washington paid one guinea to buy a lottery ticket for the 18-volume third edition. He lost the lottery, but decided to buy his own set of Encyclopaedia Britannica and wrote to Alexander Hamilton, urging him to do the same. Hamilton did, shortly before Aaron Burr killed him.
Over the years, Benjamin Franklin, Orville Wright, Henry Ford, and Sigmund Freud were all contributing Britannica authors.
By 1968, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had grown to 24 volumes and more than 36 million words. Readers called it the “World’s Greatest Know-It-All.”
Learn more in the Harry Barnard papers at UW’s American Heritage Center.