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. landmark set "Great Books of the Western World", a 54-volume set of the "great books" of Western culture. Publishing rights to "Compton's Encyclopedia" were acquired by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1961. Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a subsidiary of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. since 1964. On March 9, 1976 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission entered an opinion and order enjoining Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. from using a) deceptive advertising practices in recruiting sales agents and obtaining sales leads, and b) deceptive sales practices in the door-to-door presentations of its sales agents. Jacqui Safra gained ownership in 1996. Under Safra's ownership the company has