Power of Knowledge

There was a time knowledge was limited to print media and reading was the main option. It was books, News Papers and Magazines. I was a member of couple of libraries and frequency of my visits were exceptional. Once I was a avid reader, today I hardly go though any books rather than computers. Apart from books other device which we used to stick to was our good old radio. Every bit of knowledge we acquired that time was with lots of effort. This effort is still working, specially while calculating I hardly use a calculator. There was  some print media available that time but it was out of our reach. We envied the people who was having the series. It was Encyclopedia, specially The one from Britannica.

Once having the volumes of Britannica was a status symbol and I knew many of them those having these series in their bookshelf but never scanned through a single page in their life. The oversized volume, printed by Koberger shortly after Columbus discovered America, was a history, atlas and almanac with biographies and news items - an encyclopedia

What is Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a book or series of books that contain general information about many topics or areas. The world encyclopedia comes from the Greek enkyklia paideia, which means "a general knowledge." The word has been in use for at least 500 years, and used in print for the first time in Encyclopedia, or Knowledge of the World of Disciplines, which was published in 1559.

The first encyclopedia was written in the first century BC by Pliny the Elder with the help of his nephew. The work consisted of 37 volumes and covered everything from anthropology and human physiology to agriculture, painting, and pharmacology. An encyclopedia is often confused with a dictionary, although they are inherently different.

In the 20th century, the Encyclopedia Britannica has become the standard for encyclopedia works. Topical encyclopedias have also become more popular, and cover topics as varied as economics, bioethics. Many encyclopedias are now being published in CD-ROM form, with the most notable example being Microsoft's Encarta other encyclopedias are now entirely available online, with no print version, like Wikipedia.

Some of old and popular Encyclopedia

Pliny the Elder

One of the earliest encyclopedic works to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD. He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history, art and architecture, medicine, geography, geology and all aspects of the world around him. He stated in the preface that he had compiled 20,000 facts from 2000 different works by 200 authors, and added many others from his own experience. The work was published circa AD 77-79, although he probably never finished proofing the work before his death in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The Britannica

The Britannica  is the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland as three volumes. The encyclopedia grew in size, and by its fourth edition (1801-1809) it had expanded to a well known 20-volume set. Its rising stature helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th edition (1875–1889) and the 11th edition (1911) are landmark encyclopedias for scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the 11th edition, the Britannica shortened and simplified articles to broaden its North American market. In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopedia is continually reprinted and every article updated on a schedule.

The Encyclopædia Britannica, published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert contributors. It is regarded as one of the most scholarly of encyclopedias.

The size of the Britannica has remained roughly constant over 70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. Although publication has been based in the United States since 1901, the Britannica has maintained British spelling.

Microsoft Encarta

Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia  encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation  from 1993 to 2009. As of 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles,  numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and atlas, and homework tools, and was available on the World Wide Web by yearly subscription or by purchase on DVD or multiple CDs. Many articles could also be viewed online free of charge, a service supported by advertisements.

In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing the Encarta disc and online versions. The MSN Encarta site in all countries except Japan was closed on October 31, 2009. Japan's Encarta site was closed on December 31, 2009. Microsoft continued to operate the Encarta online dictionary at dictionary.msn.com until 2011 when they discontinued the dictionary making Encarta discontinued altogether.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia - This one is a cracker and proud to have an account with them.

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content  encyclopedia project based on an openly editable  model. The name "Wikipedia",  wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in certain cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or with their real identity, if they choose.

The fundamental principles by which Wikipedia operates are the Five pillars. The Wikipedia community has developed many policies and guidelines to improve the encyclopedia; however, it is not a formal requirement to be familiar with them before contributing.

Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia  has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting 400 million unique visitors monthly .  There are more than 82,000 active contributors  working on more than 19,000,000 articles in more than 270 languages.

!!!Source of unlimited Knowledge just under our finger, go grab it.!!!