Encyclopædia Britannica
In its first years (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the Britannica was controlled by the people who first wrote it, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and by their friends and relations, such as Thomas Bonar, George Gleig and Archibald Constable. The Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, a city in Scotland, called the Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan. It was written to replace the French Encyclopédie. Its logo, which is the floral emblem of Scotland, shows that the Britannica was a Scottish business. The encyclopædia being created is one of the most famous events that happened in the time when Scotland started inventing many things, or the Age of Enlightenment.  The Britannica started as three-book set ( in the 1st edition) written by one young editor—William Smellie— Many people said that the first edition of the encyclopædia was very inaccurate, and had many problems in it. Slowly, the Britannica changed, in the first era, to a 20-book set written by many people. Although a few other encyclopædias had been fighting with the Britannica, such as Rees's Cyclopædia and Coleridge's Encyclopædia Metropolitana, these encyclopedias either went bankrupt or were not finished because the people writing them argued. When the first era was almost over, the Britannica had many people helping to write it, all having different types of skills. The encyclopædia managed to get so many people by inviting their friends to help.