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 Third Edition much money for his liking. This event caused a feud between Bonar and Bell which was never resolved during Bell's lifetime. Bell died in 1809, and the 4th edition was completed the next year. Upon Bell's death, one of Britannica's major distributors, Archibald Constable, bought the encyclopedia, and also obtained Bonar's copyright by making him part owner of Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition The "Encyclopædia Britannica" Third Edition (1797) is an 18-volume reference work, an edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica". It was developed during the encyclopedia's earliest period as a two-man operation initiated by Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, in