History of the Encyclopædia Britannica the criteria by which the articles were sorted were not obvious even to scholars, despite Dr. Adler's claims that the sorting followed naturally from the "Propædia's" outline of all knowledge. In 1985, the "Britannica" responded to reader requests by restoring the index as a two-volume set. The number of topics indexed by the "Britannica" has fluctuated from 500,000 (1985, the same as in 1954) to 400,000 (1989,1991) to 700,000 in the current 2007 print version. Presumably, this recent increase reflects the introduction of efficient electronic indexing, since the size of the encyclopedia has remained nearly constant at approximately 40 million
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a Scottish-founded, now American company best known for publishing the "Encyclopædia Britannica", the world's oldest continuously published encyclopedia. The company was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 18th century, in the atmosphere of the Scottish Enlightenment. A printer, Colin Macfarquhar, and an engraver, Andrew Bell, formed a partnership to create a new book that would embody the new spirit of scholarship. William Smellie was engaged to edit the original three-volume work, published one volume at a time beginning in 1768. The encyclopaedia's reputation grew throughout the publication of its subsequent volumes. The 11th