There’s a comic in the current New Yorker about encyclopedias. It got me thinking about them. Were they ever really an attempt to collect all the vital worlds info those 20(?) something volumes? Or was it selling the promise of it?
Two things seem shady about them, one - they were sold door to door, mostly I think (that’s my experience anyway) and, two, there are many many more orders of magnitude of info available than is contained in those volumes.
We had them growing up, and I used them. I know they have a place but as an adult looking back, it seems like they might have been more of a gimmick than an actual learning tool.
But maybe the modern world has jaded me and I’m just a suspicious, grumpy old man.
I love them. My library time was always punctuated by a dive into one better than we had at home. They were bought when my oldest brother was small. By the time I needed them those were beginning to get elderly. I spent many hours looking them. I read early because of this and the way I made everyone read the passages under pictures that were interesting to me.
There’s no way every detail of everything could fit in a set. Even with updated books.
Just couldn’t. The set would have to be very large in a large library somewhere.
I’m disappointed, mostly where Google, Wiki and other online places have gone into over click after click to get to the point of answering simple questions. Inundated with sites trying to sell you things and sketchy Quora crap.
Or product sites of the same name.
No, they were not a scam, although there may have been some shady knock-offs. They were the best that we could do with the technology of the day to bring together a comprehensive body of basic knowledge especially suitable for children. As a kid, I spent many enjoyable hours with our encyclopedia. That they were sometimes sold door-to-door is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but in this case it doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of the product; the incentive was probably that they were a lot more expensive than a typical vacuum cleaner and so brought in better commissions.
So did I. They were the 1950s/1960s equivalent of the “For Dummies” books. If I wanted to know about American history, for example, I turned to the encyclopedia. It gave me facts, names, dates, from which I could select what I wanted to know more about, and then could go research further more specifically. Same for any number of subjects really; the encyclopedia gave me an overview, from which I could zoom in on specific topics.
I, too, spent huge amounts of time with encyclopedias, learning a metric ton of stuff covering a huge range of subjects. No different than browsing the internet, checking this and that, in a free form, rabbit hole style.
Encyclopaediae are not a scam; the concept has existed for many centuries. The Web is particularly suitable for digital reference works, and even Wikipedia has moved past the Bomis days and is genuinely useful.
I don’t really understand this thread. Your concern is that a set of books summarize human knowledge of popular topics instead of being a comprehensive record, which they never claimed to be? Which would be basically impossible in book form?
Most used book stores won’t accept donations of old sets. The Internet has made them largely obsolete, though the best ones are still beautiful and useful.
But the first Encyclopedia was considered groundbreaking and one of the most useful and influential books in academic history. Diderot, who composed it around 1774 (though my memory might be off a couple years), did not sell his magnum opus door to door and is not responsible for future marketing strategies. It might have been the first reference book.
Many years ago, some local grocery stores sold “Volume A” of a lesser encyclopedia for nine cents. Obvious this promotional loss leader was worth more, and subsequent volumes might have been a few dollars. I was always curious what percentage of people bought just volume A, and what percentage of those who bought volume A were persuaded to buy the whole set at much higher cost.
Our at-home set of World Book (and comic books) essentially taught me to enjoy reading. There was better reading (and certainly better encyclopedias) in the library, but that’s not where I spent my evenings. The salesman who sold my parents on that rather large investment (two months rent in 1972) wasn’t lying when he said it was vital to the education of the 9 year old in the house.
My mom went all the way and got the Brittanica. Which must have been an even bigger hardship for her, a single-parent teacher. The encyclopedia itself got some use, but the Great Books collection that came with it, much more so (though their translation of Homer was terrible).
Likewise. The Book of Knowledge was the first encyclopedia we had when I was quite young. It was a unique kind of encyclopedia, in a sense not really an encyclopedia at all, because instead of having articles on specific subjects organized alphabetically, it had longer, more general articles on broader topics. This made it more fun and interesting to browse than a strictly regimented reference work, and more like a magazine. It was more in that sense that it was geared more toward kids, because as I recall the articles were very much in-depth. It could be used as a reference work by means of what Britannica described as its “splendidly contrived index that remains a model of its kind”.
I spent so much time with the Book of Knowledge that even after all these years I have distinct memories of the red imitation-leather bindings on the large volumes.
There was a set of very thin semi-soft cover books that (I think) came with that set. They consisted of stories of children from other parts of the world and how they lived. I still have a few of them around here somewhere. Our set was a 1948 edition, as I recall.
That was my reaction to the OP. That, plus the fact that he thought there was necessarily something sketchy about things being sold door to door, said to me that he wasn’t looking it things from the perspective of someone from the time when encyclopedias were really useful.
At least by the 20th century, if they were ever touted as “an attempt to collect all the vital world’s info,” I think that would have been seen as obvious hyperbole. Instead, they were an attempt to collect info about a wide variety of people, places, and things, in a day when you couldn’t just look stuff up online.
I disagree - I’m not sure how many months of rent the encyclopedia my grandparents bought in maybe 1960 cost but what I can tell you is that it was absolutely not vital to my education. Because they bought the encyclopedia before I was born , and even though they kept it updated with yearbooks for a few years by the time I was 10 (1973) it was way out of date. I would have been much better off if they hadn’t bought them - my parents would have had to take me to the library to use newer encyclopedias and books. I think that’s one of the issues that makes them look scammy - that a lot of people who bought them couldn’t keep them up to date and you therefore ended up with a kid in 1976 mentioning Ceylon in a report.
In the early '60s, I had a job selling Colliers Encyclopedia door to door. The books were not a “scam” they were a beautifully illustrated source of information but…
We worked as a team of four, the leader providing transport to our designated area. During the afternoon, when most of the men were at work, we tried to set up evening appointments to get husband and wife together - experience had shown that getting a wife to sign up alone did not work out well.
We had a script that we learned and practised. We would show them a sample book and some posters that showed what the full set would look like on the shelf that was also included. The scammy part was that, although the initial volumes were very cheap, the buyers had to sign up to buy a yearbook every year for ten years on a hire purchase deal over three years. This made the true price of the books well over a week’s wages for an average worker.
Pressuring people to buy books they didn’t need for a price they couldn’t afford did not sit well with me and I only lasted two weeks. After all, the information would be readily available free of charge along with expert advice on how best to find it, at the local library.
As an aside, I see very similar tactics used by the people who sell magazines with a part of a model included each month. When you multiply the cost of the mag’ by the number of issues you have to sign up and pay for, the model will cost several hundred Pounds - far more than it’s worth.
I find it difficult to consider a book to be scammy because the world changes over time and books don’t.
I suppose the idea that parents need to spend a lot relative to their income for an encyclopedia in their home in order for their kids to get a decent education is kinda scammy. Encyclopediæ are available at public and school libraries. Other books in the home that are less expensive can be as valuable as a general reference, and reading to and with children are more important than just having the book rotting on a shelf. OTOH, if you can afford one, your kids might take advantage of them to learn on their own and spark broader interests in their lives.
We had a World Book at home, and we received Year Book updates for a number of years afterward. I don’t think they cost that much. My parents purchased them on a monthly plan. I think several volumes came initially and then one a month until the set was done. I don’t think the World Book was high priced. I think the Britannica cost more and was more of a status purchase.