Encyclopædia Britannica: Case Study and History

Vocabulary flashcards covering key entities, dates, technical specifications, and historical milestones from the case study on Encyclopædia Britannica and digital competition.

Encyclopædia Britannica First Edition

A three-volume reference work distributed in weekly installments in Scotland from 1768 to 1771, marking the inception of the Britannica brand.

Eleventh Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica

A landmark 1911 publication consisting of 29 volumes and 40,000 entries designed for a general audience, widely regarded as the best encyclopedia ever written.

Britannica Direct Sales Force

A sales network of approximately 2,000 door-to-door representatives paid a commission of $500–$600 per sale, targeting middle-income parents seeking educational advantages for their children.

1.44 MB Floppy Disc

The standard magnetic computer storage medium commonly used in the mid-1980s prior to the widespread introduction of CD-ROMs.

CD-ROM

An optical storage medium introduced in the 1980s offering 700 megabytes of storage capacity per disc, equivalent to 500 times the capacity of a standard floppy disc.

Microsoft Overture (1985)

A 1985 proposal by Microsoft offering Encyclopædia Britannica a royalty for nonexclusive rights to publish a multimedia CD-ROM version, which Britannica management rejected.

Funk & Wagnall's

A nearly defunct encyclopedia brand distributed as a promotional item in supermarkets, whose text content Microsoft licensed in 1989 to create Encarta.

Encarta

A digital multimedia CD-ROM encyclopedia released by Microsoft in 1993 based on Funk & Wagnall's content enhanced with hyperlinks, illustrations, and video clips.

Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia

A youth-focused reference publication owned by Britannica that was adapted into an early multimedia CD-ROM starting in 1987 and launched in 1990.

Advanced Technology Group

A specialized department created within Britannica following the Compton's CD-ROM project to develop digital publishing solutions, including network and web products.

Britannica Online

The web-based edition of Encyclopædia Britannica launched in early 1994, originally made available to institutional subscribers such as universities.

Robert McHenry

The retired editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica who documented the technical challenges of translating complex text, diacritics, and scientific symbols into ASCII and Windows character sets during 1993–1994.

Benton Foundation

The philanthropic organization that owned Encyclopædia Britannica prior to selling the company in 1996.

Jakob Safra

A Swiss investor who purchased Encyclopædia Britannica from the Benton Foundation in 1996 for $135 million, well below half its book value.

OpenAI

An artificial intelligence company created in the 2010s and developer of ChatGPT, which received $13 billion in cumulative investments from Microsoft up to 2025.