I’m still wondering if the OP is discussing the claim of encyclopedias being all inclusive, the claim that encyclopedias are useful to children’s education, or the aim that encyclopedias were/are sold via a scammy process.
Three largely unrelated topics IMO.
If you’re in Boston, you should go to the Christian Science Publishing headquarters to walk through their Mapparium, built in 1935. Not only does the three-story glass sphere display the political boundaries of that year, it also gives you an appreciation of the real size of every continent:
with a view from the very center of a globe, looking out, the eye is the same distance from every point on the map.
It is fascinating to view the Earth this way for the first time. Africa is huge. North America, Europe, and Asia are all jammed up against the North Pole. You have to look nearly straight up to see them. Sizes and locations of continents and countries you’ve always taken for granted are suddenly unfamiliar.
The most interesting map I’ve seen is the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral in Hereford, England which was drawn in about 1300. It maps all of what we now think of as Europe, Asia, and Africa. The people back then knew that the world was round. They didn’t generally know that North and South America existed though. They assumed that (in effect) there was only one ocean which surrounded the continents they knew and (in effect) included all of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They put east on the top of the map and Jerusalem in the middle of the map (and didn’t worry too much about getting everything in proportion):
My folks sprang for the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannia, which had a one volume outline of all knowledge, a 10-volume set of short articles, and a 19-volume set of longer articles. They also got the “Book of the Year” updates for a number of years. Great stuff for me; I loved reading them.
The Britannica wasn’t for kids, which is why they published the Britannica Junior.
We had both when I was growing up. As I kid, I browsed the Britannica Junior, but didn’t pay much attention to the grown-up Britannica except occasionally to look at the color plates.
It’s also got interesting acoustics – a true Whispering Gallery. And the countries are all the ones present when the globe was made, eons ago.
My father inherited a copy of this from his father, along with 3 of the Year Book supplements. My sister has it now. Each volume is a glorious leather bound book with marbled front and back page inserts and thin, almost rice-paper like pages.
Like many others have mentioned, I spent many happy hours as a youngster reading articles on history, science, literature, geography and more.
I grew up with a 1967 set of World Book Encyclopedias in the house. By the time I was in school, the information was already outdated (no “East and West Pakistan” or “North and South Vietnam” by that point). Still, for the time, the maps and illustrations were superb. Also, some articles had guides to the popular school projects of the era. I don’t think too many seventh graders make “crystal radio sets” or plywood locks and dams any more though.
Of course, any article on a communist country had a fairly heavy dose of anticommunism built in.
Another neat feature, though it was part of the sales hustle, was the yearbook subscription required to keep the set up to date. I don’t know how much that was, but we let it lapse by 1980 or so. But I still have some interesting books on what took place year by year, and it included article updates and new dictionary entries.
Heh. When I was in college I walked past that place all the time - though that was 50 years ago. Interesting.
This didn’t have to do with changing knowledge, so much as sloppy editing. But I can well remember coming across the article on “Dracula” in the 1970s-ish edition of the World Book that we had at home. It said that at the end of the novel, Dracula was killed by having a wooden stake driven through his heart.
That’s not true. And I knew it wasn’t true, because I had read the novel myself. In the novel he’s killed by a Bowie knife to the heart and having his head cut off with a Kukri knife.
It was a shocking blow to me at the time, age 13 or so. It was the first time I had ever encountered something in an “authoritative” source which I knew, from my own knowledge, to be false. Taught me a valuable lesson about believing something just because it’s in a fancy-looking book.
Yes, this x 1000! I grew up with a 1911 Brittanica in the house. It was useful even in the 1970s, though one had to be a bit careful about technology and country boundaries/governments.
I was also a big fan of the World Almanac before the Interwebs. I had a parlor trick where someone would wonder about something and I’d say “That’ll be in the World Almanac!” and grab my copy and prove it. The trick was, of course, having a decent idea of what kind of information was and wasn’t in the WA. But I was sorta legendary among my friends for “always being right”.
My father used to bring home old copies from his work of “Whitaker’s Almanac(k)” - an annual UK publication (800 pages or so) dating from the mid-1800’s. Lots of UK-related stuff, such as the names of virtually anyone with a title (e.g. “Knight of the …”), or sunrise/sunset for any day of the year in Belfast. It was useful for finding out who was 100th in line to the Throne.
I found an 1899 edition at a used book sale, which I picked up for a dollar or so. Much of the same categories as those a century later (the sunrises in Belfast haven’t changed much), with about 50 pages of ads at the end - which in themselves make it worthwhile reading.
I think 2021 was its last year of publication. Quite a few have been scanned and are available online.
I was another nerdy kid who loved spending time browsing through a print encyclopaedia, but mostly I’m dropping in to share this Monty Python classic:
You can borrow books from a library, and from others. You can get books for next to nothing at used book stores, even less at garage sales. The body of literary and reference work available to someone who wants to read far exceeds that found in the few volumes of an encyclopedia. Someone who can’t afford a set of encyclopedias has other options, as does anyone who can afford it.
Brilliant, funny and (in my case) true.