Encyclopædia Britannica
The "Britannica" is the English-language encyclopaedia/encyclopedia that was in print for the longest time: it lasted 244 years. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, as three volumes. (This first edition is available in facsimile.) The encyclopaedia grew in size: the second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810) it had expanded to 20 volumes. Its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th (1875–1889) and 11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the "Britannica" shortened and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market. In 1933, the "Britannica" became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule. In March 2012, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced it would no longer publish printed editions, and would focus instead on "Encyclopædia Britannica Online".
History of Wikipedia
Advances in information technology in the late 20th century led to changes in the form of encyclopedias. While previous encyclopedias, notably the "Encyclopædia Britannica", were book-based, Microsoft's Encarta, published in 1993, was available on CD-ROM and hyperlinked. The development of the World Wide Web led to many attempts to develop internet encyclopedia projects. An early proposal for an online encyclopedia was Interpedia in 1993 by Rick Gates; this project died before generating any encyclopedic content. Free software proponent Richard Stallman described the usefulness of a "Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in 1999. His published document "aims to lay out what the free encyclopedia needs to do, what sort of freedoms it needs to give the public, and how we can get started on developing it." On Wednesday 17 January 2001, two days after the founding of Wikipedia, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) GNUPedia project went online, competing with Nupedia, but today the FSF encourages people "to visit and contribute to [Wikipedia]".