Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give a big shout out to
Speaker 1: our super producer, Max Encyclopedia Brown Williams, Shamon Lamedinga.
Speaker 2: I am here, Yes you are.
Speaker 1: I am Ben Bullen, joined as always with the Man,
Speaker 1: the Myth, the Legend, mister Noel Brown, returning from adventures
Speaker 1: on Distant Shores.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that didn't quite make well, you know, I did
Speaker 3: you know what I did do? I was I got
Speaker 3: a lovely tour around foggy, foggy Malibu. I saw Shares House.
Speaker 3: It was pretty cool, if shrouded in far and I
Speaker 3: ate fish and chips at a really cool old divy
Speaker 3: biker hangout called Neptune's Net.
Speaker 1: I love a good fish and chips close to.
Speaker 3: The shore as I got them. But it was a
Speaker 3: nice time. I got to go to the Magic Castle
Speaker 3: of an Evening, which I had been once before during
Speaker 3: the daytime, and which is a kid friendly and it
Speaker 3: was a hoot. I tipped the player piano and had
Speaker 3: it play Gangster's Paradise irma the famous Well it's not.
Speaker 1: A player Piano. RMA is a ghost.
Speaker 3: I was actually scolded for calling it a player piano
Speaker 3: because it is in fact a ghost.
Speaker 1: Arm as a ghost. That was neat. It'll She'll play
Speaker 1: any song you want for the right price.
Speaker 3: I actually tipped twenty bucks and then got a second
Speaker 3: request a little later, which was be My Baby by
Speaker 3: the Ronnets. It was a good time classic follow up
Speaker 3: to Gangster's Paradise. So I think I used to have
Speaker 3: a I was.
Speaker 1: Having a lot of weird word adventures. There's a natural
Speaker 1: segue here. Yeah, we ran into it haunted. I was
Speaker 1: writing the Worcestershire Research and eventually the term lost all meanings.
Speaker 1: Smantic saciations when you just say a word repeatedly, no
Speaker 1: matter what it is, after a certain threshold, it just
Speaker 1: becomes like a meaningless jumble of sounds in your mouth.
Speaker 3: Oh but you know, you know one way to get
Speaker 3: over that is pronounce it differently every time.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, that's a good idea. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what we did.
Speaker 3: I think that's why maybe we said it so many
Speaker 3: times throughout the course of that episode.
Speaker 1: Right, It's funny because you know, we all cook a lot,
Speaker 1: and so after we recorded that I went, I was,
Speaker 1: I was prepping to make some dinner stuff and I
Speaker 1: had to add the Worcester shirt and I thought, how
Speaker 1: crazy man the English language. This is something we've all accepted.
Speaker 1: And that's where we go to today's episode. No, there's
Speaker 1: something you Max and I have been talking about quite
Speaker 1: often off air and a little bit on air. One
Speaker 1: of our favorite sources to site is the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaker 3: Right, Alas not the hard copies because it's twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four and those have unfortunately become a relic of the
Speaker 3: past and now everything's online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are fascinating stories about this. This is
Speaker 1: a little bit of a meta exploration. As a research associate,
Speaker 1: Max said, we're studying the history of history books and
Speaker 1: reference works because the Encyclopedia wasn't always around. We can
Speaker 1: start at the beginning. One of the best sources on
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia Britannica is wait for it, can you guess?
Speaker 1: Is it? The Encyclopedia Britannica nailed it? Nailed it? Hey,
Speaker 1: so absolutely. It's if we look at the people writing
Speaker 1: for Encyclopedia Britannic on their self same article, we see
Speaker 1: three authors Michael Levy, Donald D. Stewart, and Christopher Hardy
Speaker 1: Wise Kent point out, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's I mean, I mean that a good positive. That's
Speaker 3: that's a very powerful name.
Speaker 1: They say this is the Oldish General Language Encyclopedia in English.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, makes sense with a name like that.
Speaker 3: Originally it had a bit of a fancier name spelling
Speaker 3: at the very least it was the encyclop Pedia, but
Speaker 3: probably still pronounced pdia. But it's that cool AE hyphen
Speaker 3: it kind of letter that squishes them together like in
Speaker 3: a tool album.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, there's a name for that. It's
Speaker 1: it's the character. It's the Latin diphthong. That's the one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, is it the schwa? I
Speaker 3: never really know the diphthong. Well, it diphthong is a
Speaker 3: type of thing. This is just Latin gliding vowel and hey,
Speaker 3: uh hot tip pro tip if you're trying to make
Speaker 3: some cool death metal text in your phone, if you
Speaker 3: hold down on the letter, it gives you a drop
Speaker 3: down menu have all of the weird extra versions of
Speaker 3: that letter. So I think you can get this AE
Speaker 3: one by holding down on the I would.
Speaker 1: Have it will help you also with till days with
Speaker 1: accent marks and um lauts.
Speaker 3: If it's a power user trick and not everybody knows it,
Speaker 3: maybe everybody does know it at this point. But when
Speaker 3: I learned it, I learned it from my kid, which
Speaker 3: says something probably, but I thought it was a really cool,
Speaker 3: cool trick.
Speaker 1: I learned it when I was trying to text one
Speaker 1: night friends who primarily speak Spanish, and I thought that
Speaker 1: I had been hacked exactly because I held the E
Speaker 1: down too long. I was like, wait a second. It's
Speaker 1: like when you find out a transformer has another function,
Speaker 1: you know, the transformerschoice. You weren't seeing the final form
Speaker 1: at all, exactly. And the Encyclopedia Britannica took a while
Speaker 1: to reach its final form. Was first published in seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty eight and it started reaching the masses in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Speaker 1: And since its founding it's been a kind of pro
Speaker 1: to Wikipedia, much more heavily vetted, but they crowdsource right
Speaker 1: outside experts and then in house editors.
Speaker 3: Yeah again, I haven't put my hands on a real copy.
Speaker 3: And we're going to get into the whole history of
Speaker 3: that and the salesmanship of it all. But what were
Speaker 3: the citations? Do you guys remember what the citations read
Speaker 3: like in the physical Encyclopedia Britannicas.
Speaker 4: It would depend on which era, So the earliest stuff
Speaker 4: would generally only reference the editors, but later on it'd
Speaker 4: be like, this article is written by this person, but
Speaker 4: then the editors would edit the entire thing, got it.
Speaker 4: There was so many different diditions of it too, that
Speaker 4: it changed a lot throughout the history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're looking at things like if you're
Speaker 1: looking for something like the usage case of the linguistic thing,
Speaker 1: that'll be in there. But you know, we all recognize
Speaker 1: these articles. It's something like case ADA being a sandwich
Speaker 1: form from blah blah blah originating from and they've got
Speaker 1: the etymology or whatever. We don't know. We haven't read
Speaker 1: the case of DA article, but we do know that
Speaker 1: in general, throughout its different iterations, the Britannica had one
Speaker 1: thing in common with every version the entries and almost
Speaker 1: said entrees. The entries are fact checked, edited and copy
Speaker 1: edited by those in house editors, and that is all
Speaker 1: to maintain accuracy and interestingly enough readability. Because you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked with a lot of subject matter experts, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they can be a bit a bit esoteric. I
Speaker 1: was going to say the same thing, man.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that sets Britannica apart from a
Speaker 3: lot of other kind of deep, divy researched homes is
Speaker 3: its accessibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Noel.
Speaker 1: We can also go to the National Library of Scotland. Surprise,
Speaker 1: the National Library likes to brag about the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaker 1: They call it one of the enduring achievements of the
Speaker 1: Scottish Enlightenment.
Speaker 3: So to your point, Ben, it was first issued officially
Speaker 3: in seventeen sixty eight with the sort of shorthand of Britannica,
Speaker 3: which is very nationalistic. Let's just go right out and see.
Speaker 3: It's like rural Britannia kind of vibes, you know, which
Speaker 3: is absolutely cool.
Speaker 1: They should own it and they do.
Speaker 3: It was published by one Colin. Wow, I love it,
Speaker 3: Colin mcfarquhar. Yes, I think that's right.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's that's good enough for government work.
Speaker 1: I also like how it sounds like an obscure curse,
Speaker 1: you know, Well.
Speaker 3: There was a character in the Shrek movies. Remember Lord
Speaker 3: Farquhar or far Quad. He was Fari was the little
Speaker 3: fellow with the with the big the musical. It's great
Speaker 3: because the guy that plays that character just walks around on.
Speaker 1: His knees dances too. He's a he's a dancer full
Speaker 1: It's a good effect. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then mcfarquhar was a printer, and he also you know,
Speaker 3: if you're a printer, you need an engraver, And in
Speaker 3: this case, Andrew Bell came to his aid and the
Speaker 3: first edition was issued in it was like a weekly,
Speaker 3: almost like a serie, one hundred weekly parts.
Speaker 1: So you didn't it didn't come right out of the.
Speaker 3: Gate with the massive tome that you once saw before you,
Speaker 3: at least in terms of the what the door to
Speaker 3: door sales.
Speaker 1: It was like a really dirty comic book that later
Speaker 1: got collected in trade edition.
Speaker 3: So it took about three years for the full volume,
Speaker 3: or at least a full volume to be produced, and
Speaker 3: when it was completed in seventeen seventy one, it is
Speaker 3: just three volumes actually, and we know, of course it
Speaker 3: went on to consist of many more than that. Bell,
Speaker 3: who had a very fine reputation as an engraver for
Speaker 3: The Scots magazine, produced all one hundred and sixty copper
Speaker 3: play illustrations.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Another thing that Britannica is known for having really cool
Speaker 3: illustrations early on that went on to become really nice
Speaker 3: full color photographs.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and also have become artifacts of history in
Speaker 1: their own right. You know. Just I love diving into
Speaker 1: the incredibly specific copper plates illustrations, the diagrams. The executive
Speaker 1: editor of Britannica, whom Max has a little bit of
Speaker 1: a crush on, is quoted in a December thirtieth, twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen article with CBS News celebrating the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the Britannica and this guy, the executive
Speaker 1: editor tem Pappas. He says Britannica did something unique. It
Speaker 1: combined long scholarly essays with short, definitional entries and practical information.
Speaker 1: There was also this is a funny story. In this interview,
Speaker 1: he says, there was also a third person in addition
Speaker 1: to mcfauquar and Bell who was responsible for the genesis
Speaker 1: of this thing, a guy named William Smelli sne Llie. Sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was sort of their Tyrian. He was very learned
Speaker 1: and according to Papas, also had a quote wonderful capacity
Speaker 1: for drinking.
Speaker 3: Oh and perhaps with an accompanying odor, and perhaps, if
Speaker 3: nominative determinism is to be believed, right, wonderful he drinks
Speaker 3: and he knows things, and he's a little bit smelly.
Speaker 1: Then we have three guys. Two of them have no
Speaker 1: formal training. The one who does have formal training as
Speaker 1: a man of letters and an editor, is you know,
Speaker 1: he likes the sauce. He's a pretty saucy boy. So
Speaker 1: the fact that they were able to actually bring this
Speaker 1: wildly ambitious work into the real world is pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: But they also had, you know, with the benefit of retrospect,
Speaker 1: we can see that they had some times where they
Speaker 1: played jazz a little bit. They made some educated guesses.
Speaker 3: Well that's the thing though, And you know, and I
Speaker 3: hear you, and maybe you could easily look at that
Speaker 3: and be like, ooh, not necessarily the most highly vetted,
Speaker 3: most let's just say, illustrious of sources, you know. But
Speaker 3: I think the fact that it kind of came from
Speaker 3: curious people is interesting because I mean, that's sort of
Speaker 3: our whole thing here. Our ridiculous history is we're not
Speaker 3: what you'd call experts per se, but if anything, we
Speaker 3: are just professionally curious, and I think that oftentimes leads
Speaker 3: to some interesting discoveries that maybe might not even be made,
Speaker 3: or questions that might not even be asked by the
Speaker 3: more you know academic of types agreed, I am agreed.
Speaker 2: The more smelly of types.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I am a great disciple of an evangelizer for curiosity.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most amazing parts of the human experience.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we forgive the foibles we have to.
Speaker 1: You know, if you read the seventeen sixty eight edition,
Speaker 1: you see that they've added an extra L to the
Speaker 1: name of California and gotten some you know, some facts
Speaker 1: about that a little bit incorrect. They didn't know if
Speaker 1: it was a peninsula or an island. It's maybe it's
Speaker 1: easy for people to scoff at that, but I would
Speaker 1: also ask, where's your encyclopedia? Well, you know, show us
Speaker 1: your encyclopedia where you wrote one. Oh wait, did you not?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? So they these guys also,
Speaker 1: they're so hungry, they've got such a drive, and curiosity
Speaker 1: is at the core of their mission, the idea that
Speaker 1: the world is both understandable and worth understanding. They after
Speaker 1: they release this thing, they take like a little bit
Speaker 1: of time off and then they start working on the
Speaker 1: second edition, which is even more ambitious.
Speaker 3: So I have a question in these days, are these
Speaker 3: additions alphabetical per volume? Are they covering different source, different
Speaker 3: subject matter material? Is this meant to be a compendium
Speaker 3: of all things? Because in my knowledge of the Encyclopedter
Speaker 3: Britannica from back in the day was that you had
Speaker 3: your a's and your B and your C and your D.
Speaker 2: They better not have that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So at this point it was like, these are
Speaker 4: things that we think is important, like people like uh,
Speaker 4: they had like a I think a thirty page article
Speaker 4: about smoke, right, how smoke? It was a lot of things,
Speaker 4: and it was interesting like they had a couple of
Speaker 4: chapters that were shorter than they would also have like
Speaker 4: just random writings that weren't titled, that were like longer
Speaker 4: than chapters, and.
Speaker 1: Just like it was an intrigued scientific thought, philosophical stuff,
Speaker 1: the nature of famous works of art, you know, they
Speaker 1: did they were aiming to be as comprehensive as possible,
Speaker 1: but going into it. They knew that they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to include everything, so it was not as it
Speaker 1: was not as comprehensive as later versions, and perhaps that's
Speaker 1: why they so quickly got to make in the second edition.
Speaker 1: This the first one, like we said, three volumes, the
Speaker 1: second one ten volumes, nine thousand pages according to the scuttle,
Speaker 1: but people generally believe the first edition had two three
Speaker 1: and ninety one pages. So this is explosive growth.
Speaker 3: And surely, despite you know, there may be having been
Speaker 3: some issues with the facts in some of these first volumes,
Speaker 3: these are highly sought after collectibles. I can only imagine
Speaker 3: they're worth a pretty penny.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, and could you even put a price
Speaker 1: on owning that that part of history. I'm sure places
Speaker 1: like Sopha Bees do they tried to do something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should do the best of their ability.
Speaker 1: We should. Definitely, we should do a history of auction houses.
Speaker 1: That'd be great.
Speaker 3: That's a really, really good idea. I'm making a mental
Speaker 3: note of that. Yeah, I'm sure Max is making a
Speaker 3: physical note of that. That's really cool.
Speaker 1: No, it is.
Speaker 3: You always ask like, how can you put a price
Speaker 3: on this? Well, somebody can, and it's literally their job
Speaker 3: and it has been a historical occupation. But no, the
Speaker 3: second edition is when the editor James Tyler, but with
Speaker 3: two teas for no good reason. No good reason there,
Speaker 3: let's just throw a second silent tea in there, just
Speaker 3: to juz it up a little bit. He joined the
Speaker 3: family and the second edition went well beyond the aforementioned
Speaker 3: scope of simply arts and science. They wanted to take
Speaker 3: it much larger in scope, which is why Smelly whose
Speaker 3: name will never not give me a chuckle, he didn't
Speaker 3: care for including biographical material, so he actually opted out
Speaker 3: of being the editor because he felt like they were
Speaker 3: going against his particular philosophy of what these volumes should consist.
Speaker 1: Of, right, which is largely what we will call stem
Speaker 1: knowledge and maybe classical arts. But the idea was, look,
Speaker 1: I don't want this to fall into I don't want
Speaker 1: this to be eroded into like meandering jeremiads about tamer
Speaker 1: Lane or something, and this I'm sorry jeremiads. Yeah, jeremiad
Speaker 1: is a word for a long complaint.
Speaker 3: That's because like, how are people named jeremiahs supposed to
Speaker 3: feel about this?
Speaker 1: They know what they did, I guess they do, so
Speaker 1: it's like a bitter lament. It's it's a sad story.
Speaker 3: I'm adding that to my list of esoteric words to
Speaker 3: throw around at party.
Speaker 1: Bear me your Jeremiah's. And they're saying, and I just
Speaker 1: didn't like the live action death note, And yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: good day.
Speaker 3: Oh, the live action death note was quite bad.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it, you did, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: parts of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I enjoyed parts of it, I suppose, But overall
Speaker 3: it just seemed a little a little flabby. And see,
Speaker 3: mine was the opposite of a Jeremiah, which is a
Speaker 3: very pithy complaint. The live action death note was quite bad.
Speaker 3: Moving on, So moving.
Speaker 1: On, James Tyler, whose name may not be a typo.
Speaker 1: We're not quite sure, because again, yeah t t y
Speaker 1: l e R we are oh t t y l
Speaker 1: e R. He's a talk.
Speaker 3: To let's keep going. We don't have to waste quite yet.
Speaker 3: He's a talk to you later.
Speaker 1: This name may have been a typo. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are the same people who, not too long ago, at
Speaker 1: this point spelled California with two l's.
Speaker 3: But he as Anthony Keitas intended, right, he is.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get the best description from the Britannic itself
Speaker 1: and from the from contemporaries like the Scottish poet Robert Burns,
Speaker 1: most famous for Burns Day. At the time when the
Speaker 1: world and nerds hagis, Robert Burns described him as an obscure, tippling,
Speaker 1: but extraordinary body. And Britannica themselves says this James Tyler
Speaker 1: guy was a brilliant but penniless polymath, like, hey man,
Speaker 1: why are you so good at numbers? But you're so broke.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I did really well on the
Speaker 3: verbal part of the set and not so well on
Speaker 3: the math.
Speaker 1: So they also in Britannica they note that James T.
Speaker 1: Tyler was outlawed for printing a seditious handbill and he
Speaker 1: died in Salem, Massachusetts because of his zene.
Speaker 3: Because but they didn't suspect him of witchcraft or anything.
Speaker 3: Did The Salem, Massachusetts is just a coincidence. Just edition, Okay,
Speaker 3: fair enough, just edition. So onward into expanding this volume.
Speaker 3: This ragtag crew went releasing the third edition between seventeen
Speaker 3: eighty eight and seventeen ninety seven, upping the number of
Speaker 3: additions to eighteen and fourteen thousand, five hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: nine pages. We're that we're quickly approaching what some might
Speaker 3: call a ponderous tome.
Speaker 1: Do like a ponderous tome? Yeah, this is getting unwieldy, right.
Speaker 1: This edition is edited by MEFA. Kwar, but he passes
Speaker 1: away in seventeen ninety three and they have another guy,
Speaker 1: a clergyman named George Gleig, take over the work. The
Speaker 1: third edition does something that is enormous for Britannica. They
Speaker 1: give recognition to the authors who are writing a lot
Speaker 1: of this. They used to just print a list of publications, right,
Speaker 1: we got this from you know, our version of Town
Speaker 1: and Country. But the third edition has a preface where
Speaker 1: it names the chief contributors.
Speaker 2: This means that you.
Speaker 1: Can see the authors of these things and you also,
Speaker 1: because copyright law is very different back then, they also
Speaker 1: still just reprinted stuff that they got from other books.
Speaker 3: So there was a bit a cutt and pa no citation.
Speaker 1: I think they did cite the books. Okay, okay, cool
Speaker 1: fair news like this is from this is a description
Speaker 1: of auras from Twilight or whatever. Gotcha.
Speaker 3: This is a reprinting of the Rix to Amber by
Speaker 3: the seminal nineties rap rock band three.
Speaker 1: Eleven right, right, and at this point Britannica notes that
Speaker 1: things are taking off. They sold ten thousand copies of
Speaker 1: the third edition and the profit for the original two
Speaker 1: creators Bell and mcfaukuhar was forty two thousand pounds. If
Speaker 1: we want inflation, calculate that we do have the number
Speaker 1: and a boot hoop boop five million, six hundred and
Speaker 1: five thousand, nine hundred ninety nine dollars and sixty two
Speaker 1: cents today.
Speaker 4: With a very large margin of error because going modern
Speaker 4: day to this period time and changing from pounds to
Speaker 4: dollars not great.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of money, is what we're saying.
Speaker 1: These kids, we were basically set for life.
Speaker 3: Except for line. I was about to say, that's borderline
Speaker 3: retirement money. I would say, depending on your what kind
Speaker 3: of lifestyle you choose to live.
Speaker 1: That's like for breeze people.
Speaker 3: Surely, I think so, that's I would the excirement right,
Speaker 3: I think it would be, yes, correct, This is so
Speaker 3: hard hard to say these days, with the price of
Speaker 3: eggs going through.
Speaker 1: The price of caviar spoons alone.
Speaker 3: Indeed, the nineteenth century was, of course a time of
Speaker 3: great growth and expansion throughout the world, you know, in
Speaker 3: terms of you know, science and technology, and just an
Speaker 3: exponential movement of ideas and things. Therefore the encyclopedia had
Speaker 3: to keep up. A big change was with a growing
Speaker 3: collection of archive writings that were becoming more readily available. Therefore,
Speaker 3: it took a lot less time to dig all this
Speaker 3: stuff up right and to write new things, new kind
Speaker 3: of hot takes. Yeah, because let's keep in mind in
Speaker 3: these early days, so we're still in the early days.
Speaker 3: In these early days, these guys weren't you know, googling stuff.
Speaker 3: They had to go find books, and these books were
Speaker 3: not in infinite quantities, so you might have to us
Speaker 3: go find the one library that has the one manuscript
Speaker 3: that you need because it's the best explanation of you know,
Speaker 3: gravity or smoke. Right, So this is what they were
Speaker 3: working with. We want to be very clear. They were
Speaker 3: doing hard, arduous research, and you know, we can we
Speaker 3: don't want to get too far in the weeds. But
Speaker 3: they get the fifth edition in eighteen fifteen, it's a revision.
Speaker 3: In the fourth edition, they started doing this thing where
Speaker 3: they would publish corrections and the final volume of a
Speaker 3: collection when they were still doing it like on weekly disbursements.
Speaker 3: Then they did the sixth edition, then they did the
Speaker 3: fifth edition, then they did the you know, it goes
Speaker 3: the eighth, ninth, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth. By this time we're
Speaker 3: in you know, we're in the early twentieth century, and
Speaker 3: unbeknownst to many many people, except possibly some international banking interests,
Speaker 3: Britannica and every business in the West was about to
Speaker 3: be a big, big trouble. Yeah, it was inevitable we
Speaker 3: were going to get there. At the beginning of the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties, Britannica, much like everybody else on the planet,
Speaker 3: fell a victim to the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: We can't afford to a penny candy. How are we
Speaker 1: going to buy this encyclopedia set? Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it just it makes you realize how much it's how
Speaker 1: easy it is to take for granted the acts of
Speaker 1: the time, to access and ingest knowledge and to study.
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily a survival pastime, if there are, I
Speaker 3: don't think any survival things would qualify as pastimes. Those
Speaker 3: are things that are meant to pass the time. Survival
Speaker 3: stuff is you know, food, shelter, water, protection from marauding
Speaker 3: bands of roving cannibals or totally a thing. Yeah, a
Speaker 3: million percent. So not to mention that to own a book,
Speaker 3: you know, let alone a massive volume or series of
Speaker 3: volumes of this kind of stuff, was a very privileged
Speaker 3: thing to be able to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is. And you know, even if you
Speaker 1: are a huge, diehard fan of knowledge and reading and learning,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to being able to either buy
Speaker 1: food or water versus buying a book, most people worse,
Speaker 1: come to worse, are going to have to buy the
Speaker 1: food or water. It's an excellent point. The publisher at
Speaker 1: the time resigns. Nineteen thirty two, the vice president of Sears,
Speaker 1: a guy named Elkin Harrison Powell check out our series episode,
Speaker 1: is chosen to replace him, even though he has no
Speaker 1: publishing experience, and Powell brings something new to the game.
Speaker 1: He says, We're going to do direct sales. Yes, direct sales,
Speaker 1: door to door, door to door, encyclopedia salesman. I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, I am so happy, you guys. Never you
Speaker 1: guys didn't see a lot of my on stage sketch comedy.
Speaker 1: One of the dumbest sketches I ever wrote was door
Speaker 1: to door door salesman. So it's a guy who goes
Speaker 1: door to door selling doors.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I mean there could you can make
Speaker 3: a case for a door being in disrepair perhaps, you know,
Speaker 3: and say, boy, do I have a solution for you.
Speaker 1: It might be it might be good.
Speaker 3: If he added doors and door accessories, though I think
Speaker 3: it goes so.
Speaker 1: Far off the rails. He also sells doors themed doors,
Speaker 1: like Jim Morrison, so he's door to door doors door salesman,
Speaker 1: and that's fun.
Speaker 3: I have to say, though, you know, we we really
Speaker 3: do think of this as kind of the golden age
Speaker 3: of the Encyclopedia Britannic of simply by virtue of the
Speaker 3: fact that most people, even if they don't really remember
Speaker 3: this time, which we don't directly, it became I think
Speaker 3: more mail order or you know, like a phone number
Speaker 3: over a.
Speaker 1: Blue screen on TV. Maybe when we were younger.
Speaker 3: The idea of the traveling salesmen, you know, or the
Speaker 3: vacuum cleaner salesman who would do a demo for you,
Speaker 3: or you know, the encyclopedia salesman. It's such a golden
Speaker 3: kind of image of like Americana, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, it's it's difficult to overstate just how common
Speaker 1: door to door sales were, you know, and some of
Speaker 1: these things continue today. But I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say in many parts of the United States, an unannounced
Speaker 1: visitor at your front door, especially a stranger, is not welcome,
Speaker 1: even people they know. I would assume that. I think
Speaker 1: we would all assume something was up if one of
Speaker 1: us just showed up at the other one's house unannounced.
Speaker 1: Because we can text each other, we could do a
Speaker 1: phone call. If even if I get a phone call,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. I assume someone has died, right a phone call.
Speaker 1: If you showed up at my I mean, I have
Speaker 1: you guys back. But if either of you showed up
Speaker 1: at my house unannounced, I would be like, get the fuckin,
Speaker 1: turn off your phone. Are the cops involved yet? Exactly? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Where where do we need to? Where's the body?
Speaker 1: Where are we going? I'm pulling up the Delta app now?
Speaker 1: Or are we just going off the grid? Exactly?
Speaker 3: But you know, it makes sense though that the Seers
Speaker 3: guy sort of spearheaded this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sears also is famous for their catalog and kind of
Speaker 3: creating this image of exactly what I was just describing.
Speaker 3: That kind of American dream sort of bliss, you know,
Speaker 3: the hell they had like a whole house kit that
Speaker 3: you could buy and build the symbol yourself.
Speaker 1: I would say. There's also another great contribution the Powell
Speaker 1: makes to the Britannica. He says, look, we are going
Speaker 1: to engage in continual revision. So instead of completely resetting
Speaker 1: additions at long intervals, they're going to print a new
Speaker 1: version of the encyclopedia every year, and with each printing
Speaker 1: they're going to assume that some percentage of material is
Speaker 1: going to need to be updated, or they're going to
Speaker 1: need to add a new suddenly relevant a piece of content,
Speaker 1: and everything else is just going to be reviewed annually
Speaker 1: until it's time to revise it, like new countries or something.
Speaker 3: Well, so were people I mean, I guess maybe if
Speaker 3: you were wealthy enough you could afford it. Were people
Speaker 3: like buying entirely new sets every year. I don't think
Speaker 3: so I couldn't have I mean addition, Yeah, but even then,
Speaker 3: like you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: Like institutions are buying this and people are going to
Speaker 1: those libraries.
Speaker 3: It is probably that's a good point. They had to
Speaker 3: have a lot of business from those kinds of institutions.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right, But he's got to wonder, like, what's
Speaker 3: the business model here? It seems like the kind of
Speaker 3: thing where you sell it once and then it's sort
Speaker 3: of like we were not going to buy another set
Speaker 3: of encyclopedias.
Speaker 1: Ah, this is where they get to something what a
Speaker 1: great setup. This is where they get to something even cooler.
Speaker 1: So now they have they have created some new problems
Speaker 1: trying to fix the existing problems. So now they have
Speaker 1: to require now they need a full time, permanent staff
Speaker 1: of professional editors instead of people who are you know,
Speaker 1: like three beers in and say yeah, man, i'll do it.
Speaker 1: I'll write about Croatia like the early days. So they started,
Speaker 1: they hit the same So they've got to hire these
Speaker 1: guys full time, these people full time, and then they
Speaker 1: reach this other problem I think you outlined quite well,
Speaker 1: which is we know that folks don't have a ton
Speaker 1: of disposable income to just always spend on encyclopedias. So
Speaker 1: we have to stay relevant, right, And that's where they
Speaker 1: come up with a group of unsung heroes. The answer girls,
Speaker 1: No boy, but yeah, it didn't age perfectly. But they
Speaker 1: were this crack team of women who would you. If
Speaker 1: you owned Encyclopedia Britannica, you could reach out to the
Speaker 1: Answer Girls. They would research and answer any question you
Speaker 1: might have. So you could send them a postcard, attach
Speaker 1: a stamp and ail it to them and they would
Speaker 1: type a detailed report of up to ten thousand words.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bulk at that.
Speaker 3: For some reason in my mind, I was picturing them
Speaker 3: as being like dressed as like Vegas showgirls or something,
Speaker 3: and just had being sort of like a problem. Look
Speaker 3: women with knowledge, what a novel idea? And they're lookers too,
Speaker 3: you know, So my mistake. That's actually pretty interesting. So
Speaker 3: this came essentially with your I guess there wasn't a
Speaker 3: subscription per se, but you you had access to this
Speaker 3: without having to pay like a per use fee or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you just well you had to pay for
Speaker 1: the stamp. But I stand. I thought that was a
Speaker 1: really cool answer, you know, to the The Answer Girls
Speaker 1: are great answer to that question. And these changes also
Speaker 1: are reflected in the fourteenth edition. This one differs because
Speaker 1: it is constructed differently in terms of its structure and
Speaker 1: it has a different scoop. This means they're a lot
Speaker 1: more editors, fifty associate editors in London and New York
Speaker 1: all told. They kind of have an area of expertise
Speaker 1: on specific subjects, and then they have staffs and offices
Speaker 1: that coordinate everything to keep people from writing the same
Speaker 1: article twice or something like that. And they are not
Speaker 1: able to really remake the encyclopedia until everybody gets through
Speaker 1: first the Great Depression and then World War Two. So
Speaker 1: it's like the nineteen after the nineteen fifties that they say,
Speaker 1: let's try to judge it back up. Well, that's right.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until the mid nineteen fifties, You're right that
Speaker 3: this sustained effort to kind of reinvent the wheel here began,
Speaker 3: and it happened to coincide with Encyclopedia Britannica's two hundred
Speaker 3: birthday in nineteen sixty eight, which was when this task
Speaker 3: had kind of been completed. The encyclopedia had a lot
Speaker 3: less old material in it, probably than ever before in
Speaker 3: its entire history. Fast forward to the nineteen eighties, with
Speaker 3: the advent of a lot more access to digital editions
Speaker 3: of technology obviously had improved significantly. The Internet was very
Speaker 3: much the twinkle of it had begun, right, if not
Speaker 3: the actual Worldwide Web, we wouldn't really see reach the
Speaker 3: public until the nineties. The nineteen eighties did see the
Speaker 3: development and spread of the PC and disc technology, which
Speaker 3: was of course, you guys raally remember this definitely a
Speaker 3: precursor to the Internet, where you could get things that were,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of information that was crammed onto
Speaker 3: a single disc or a set of discs that would
Speaker 3: take up way less space than a massive series of books.
Speaker 1: Of bound books.
Speaker 3: So while it wasn't access to everything, which is the
Speaker 3: click of a mouse, it was a pretty significant step forward.
Speaker 1: Oh no kidding, I remember I had a couple of
Speaker 1: editions of these growing up. There was the two disc
Speaker 1: CD that had illustrations and photos, so kind of kind
Speaker 1: of just a digitized version of the original thing, but
Speaker 1: a little bit easier to search. But then the next
Speaker 1: edition a few years later had video and animation and
Speaker 1: even audio clips, which was a big deal back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. Oh man, I'm not so old and
Speaker 1: this At first they were charging like the same price
Speaker 1: for these CD sets that they would charge for the
Speaker 1: physical copies, but overall the price plummets across time and
Speaker 1: sometime in like the I guess late nineteen nineties or so,
Speaker 1: Britannica releases their website eb dot com. It's a subscription
Speaker 1: service where you can digitally use the encyclopedia. Who signs
Speaker 1: up for online subscriptions, you might be asking yourself because
Speaker 1: they're not as common today outside of like streaming platforms, right, Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's you know, that's funny. You said
Speaker 3: that out loud, and I was like, I've got a bunch,
Speaker 3: but but they are largely video or music streaming services.
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily subscribe to any database, but but you
Speaker 3: do have you can subscribe to like Lexus, Nexus and
Speaker 3: and things like that, But don't you also have to
Speaker 3: be from a representative of an institution or some bona
Speaker 3: fides like we could get into the newspapers or newspapers
Speaker 3: you have, man, people bulk at those, oh dude, And
Speaker 3: they really do. And I've certainly signed up for a
Speaker 3: few here and there because we use them all the time.
Speaker 3: But uh, it's only human to try to get as
Speaker 3: many free articles as you can before they block you
Speaker 3: out behind that paywall and then it resets.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I do wonder about that. I always wanted.
Speaker 1: You know, in my family there were a couple of
Speaker 1: sets of of OED but as well the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaker 1: And the thing is they're just so they're they're prestigious
Speaker 1: and it's beautiful and it is a phone knowledge, but
Speaker 1: they're so cumbersome. Man. Yeah, it's it's a lot to
Speaker 1: move around, like I I has the main reason I
Speaker 1: hesitate to move. You've been to my house before. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of books, dude, and it's like it's
Speaker 1: always a culling period when it's time to time to move.
Speaker 1: So maybe the CD is the less sexy but for
Speaker 1: the time more efficient. Answer.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting too because I don't have nearly as
Speaker 3: many books as you do. I have some, but I
Speaker 3: have quite a lot of instrument piece and instruments, but
Speaker 3: I have I guess my my eggs. My comparison here
Speaker 3: is with you know, I subscribe to different streaming services,
Speaker 3: but I also buy a lot of physical albums and
Speaker 3: that's because those are the ones that I want if
Speaker 3: the Internet explodes, if the streaming services go bust. Also
Speaker 3: the ones that I want those artists to actually get
Speaker 3: decently paid for, because we all know that artists and
Speaker 3: surely writers aren't getting nearly as much money for streamed
Speaker 3: or digitally accessed content. So but I also know I
Speaker 3: like having the physical copy of an album that I
Speaker 3: really want to listen to from front to back and
Speaker 3: have the full color art and all that stuff, and
Speaker 3: I think that applies to physical books as well.
Speaker 1: Agreed, Agreed, you know. And also I'm still paranoid from
Speaker 1: one of the very first books that was issued through
Speaker 1: I think Kindle or something. It was nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: People purchased it and then due to a rights disagreement,
Speaker 1: it was pulled from their kindles. So I don't feel
Speaker 1: like you really own something unless you have the tangible
Speaker 1: artifact of it. Oh, we know that to be true.
Speaker 3: Like, for example, I think it was with PlayStation there
Speaker 3: was something with PlayStation Network where if you bought a
Speaker 3: you know, I think it was to do with the
Speaker 3: Warner brother acquisition, you know, by discovery that if you
Speaker 3: had quote unquote bought some of these HBO shows or
Speaker 3: whatever it was, some HBO content or something involved in
Speaker 3: the merger, they changed the nature of those rights and
Speaker 3: the way that stuff worked, and you really didn't own.
Speaker 1: That stuff at all.
Speaker 3: And a lot of that stuff just vanish and it
Speaker 3: was like, well, we've got your money and you didn't
Speaker 3: read the fine print.
Speaker 1: So I completely agree with you.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that I own anything unless I have
Speaker 3: it in physical form.
Speaker 1: Yeah, possession nine tenths. So we know that Britannic is
Speaker 1: still around today. It had a lot of recent news
Speaker 1: as we get closer to the modern the modern times.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, Britannic is sold to a financia
Speaker 1: named Jacob E. Saffra, and he really leads a restructuring
Speaker 1: all Britannica overall as company, as an institution, as an enterprise.
Speaker 1: The sales of the print encyclopedia naturally are declining, the
Speaker 1: sales force the door to door encyclopedias. They get disbanded
Speaker 1: in nine ninety nine. They launch a different site, britannica
Speaker 1: dot com. It is free. It also has subject channels.
Speaker 1: Currently that's the one we use largely.
Speaker 3: If we're citing it, we're citing something that we've found there, right, right.
Speaker 4: The truth of the matter is the two things eventually
Speaker 4: like they basically did the fusion dance and became.
Speaker 1: One right exactly, and they also it was so popular
Speaker 1: when it came out that several times it crashed because
Speaker 1: too many people were too curious. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie.
Speaker 3: I mean, curiosity is such an important facet of being
Speaker 3: a human and it is also literally our bread and butter.
Speaker 3: So I hope people never stop being curious because it
Speaker 3: is kind of what pays our.
Speaker 1: Bills and gives us a reason to get up in
Speaker 1: the morning. Is we don't do this stuff just for money.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're genuinely curious people, which is I think
Speaker 3: what has allowed us to do okay in this in
Speaker 3: this field, our group text.
Speaker 1: Are so weird, you guys. I think they're interesting. I
Speaker 1: think they're interesting.
Speaker 2: But you guys.
Speaker 1: Ever comes it on my new game purchase, by the way,
Speaker 1: was it was a Marrow Wind.
Speaker 4: Which I made sure to get off of the streaming
Speaker 4: source that I bought it from and onto my PC
Speaker 4: because of your port earlier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was when I say I'm back. Was that
Speaker 1: pre elder scrolls or posts?
Speaker 2: It's older scrolls three?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in the franchise and it's back when they
Speaker 1: were Oh man, I enjoy that one, but I kind
Speaker 1: of hate enjoy it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to when, like I'm
Speaker 4: moving up. Daggerfall had to put down because it's just
Speaker 4: so holding. It's really just brutally boring. Yeah, but uh,
Speaker 4: I'm kind of looking forward to oblivion. They have D
Speaker 4: and D dice rolls on your attacks and more. When
Speaker 4: I found a mod that turned that off, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: thank god. Basically, you know, if you swung get somebody,
Speaker 4: there's a chance you hit. Even if you're swinging right
Speaker 4: out them.
Speaker 1: They're like, maybe you hit. And I do kind of
Speaker 1: like that turn based combat, like you know, that's.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not turn based, it's not even not no.
Speaker 1: It's just it's rolling the dice. And then so you
Speaker 1: could end up wiping several times no matter what.
Speaker 2: And then you get killed by a mud crab.
Speaker 1: Boulders Gate three. Let me just prostly that's what I heard.
Speaker 1: I was about to ask.
Speaker 3: Seems alley too much, it's too much fun. I'm still
Speaker 3: back in in in Skyrim Land. I've been away for
Speaker 3: a while, i haven't had access to it. I'm looking
Speaker 3: forward to jumping back in and watching the new Fallout series,
Speaker 3: which I think kicks. But it was amazing, really making
Speaker 3: me want to just play Fallout UH New Vegas. I
Speaker 3: was also just out in Vegas, so be fun to see.
Speaker 3: I stopped by Prim on the way to UH to
Speaker 3: Joshua Tree. Some of the cities are real and like
Speaker 3: the roadside Dinosaurs. But the first one that really reinvigorated
Speaker 3: that was just what Fallout three? Yeah or three? That
Speaker 3: was the one that the two was still kind of
Speaker 3: top down three. Wait, no, three is one Bethesa had
Speaker 3: Bethesda bought it after two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it changed it around.
Speaker 1: So that's when it really starts being the one we
Speaker 1: know in love. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They used a lot of the stuff they had built
Speaker 2: out for more.
Speaker 1: It's like the UH Encyclopedia Britannica. A lot of it
Speaker 1: is why not? Why wouldn't it be? Why is any
Speaker 1: We will not allow anything to be beyond compare we
Speaker 1: We're okidding though, really quickly though, we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: how valuable a physical copy of the first edition might be,
Speaker 1: and we let's see if we can find one first.
Speaker 3: Edition uh in Cyclopedia Britannica. While I'm googling that though,
Speaker 3: whether or not you can put your hands on one
Speaker 3: and or you have one it's worth a bundle. You
Speaker 3: can't access it online and see how how it's aged and.
Speaker 4: Ald to correct myself from earlier, Yeah, it's a A
Speaker 4: through Z.
Speaker 1: It is, but it's an incomplete A through Z. And
Speaker 1: the very first thing like they they alphabetize their entries,
Speaker 1: but they know they're not getting to everything right, so
Speaker 1: there are countries they know exists that they don't include
Speaker 1: in there. Things like that in the first edition five
Speaker 1: and you can you can see this real you can
Speaker 1: read the first edition free digitally exactly.
Speaker 3: I do want to just drop this in the chat
Speaker 3: guys real quick so you can take a look. Because
Speaker 3: we were how we talked about it was almost like
Speaker 3: a comic book for super nerds, because comic books are
Speaker 3: already for nerds. These look at the way these these
Speaker 3: are put together. They're in these boxes like a freaking
Speaker 3: graphic novel compendium that you might buy, and each of
Speaker 3: these individual volumes is about the size of a graphic novel.
Speaker 3: And here on AbeBooks dot com you can get a
Speaker 3: first edition let's see two slightly incomplete sets bound in
Speaker 3: one hundred and seven volumes for thirty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Which is honestly lower than I thought it would be.
Speaker 1: It's way lower than I thought, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: to give a frame of purpose.
Speaker 3: I imagine that a complete set would be maybe not exponentially,
Speaker 3: but probably quite a bit more valuable.
Speaker 1: Look at the way they wrote it, though, two relatively
Speaker 1: incomplete sets. So are they saying that there's a Venn
Speaker 1: diagram of missing books because it's two sets? Are they
Speaker 1: both missing the same books? Who was stolen? Volume seven?
Speaker 3: I thinker than others. They're not all of uniform length
Speaker 3: like they're They're kind of all over the place. And
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I look as i'm zooming in, I'm realizing
Speaker 3: these are just in kind of like those office move boxes.
Speaker 3: Is kind of crazy. These were not bound and sold
Speaker 3: the case. Yeah no, but it's still pretty cool, man.
Speaker 3: Like some of these are really thin, like what was
Speaker 3: in this one over here on the far right. It
Speaker 3: looks like it's literally like a single article like bound.
Speaker 3: It's realiant.
Speaker 1: It's that's the one about farts modulance, which you know naturally.
Speaker 4: They they expand, they expand that volad over time.
Speaker 1: This is a great way to end our exploration today, folks.
Speaker 1: We have a great Ridiculous Historian Award to give to
Speaker 1: our friend A. J. Bahama's Jacobs, who has reputedly read
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety. I remember talking with
Speaker 1: him about this.
Speaker 3: Pretty sure he's also read the Bible in its entirety
Speaker 3: at the very least the Old Testaments constitutions. Well, that's
Speaker 3: like the least impressive of the three things. We just no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's true. Yeah, and again we need to we need
Speaker 3: we needed that. We're actually probably going to see him
Speaker 3: relatively soon, so we need to quiz Hi a little
Speaker 3: bit about which edition are we talking here, and what
Speaker 3: were your impressions overall?
Speaker 1: I feel like I talked with him about that at
Speaker 1: some point. Uh. And he's such a humble guy, folks.
Speaker 1: We can't say enough good stuff about Bahamas. So check
Speaker 1: out his show The Puzzler. He's got a book coming
Speaker 1: out that will have him back on to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But he's actually yeah, the Year of Living Constitutionally also
Speaker 1: check out.
Speaker 3: I think we're going to have him on for a
Speaker 3: sort of constitutionally themed episode.
Speaker 1: Oh he knows so much weird stuff now, it's so cool.
Speaker 1: I really like that guy. And I got into him
Speaker 1: because of the year of living biblically, which absolutely slaps
Speaker 1: as well. Uh but yes, big big things to mister A. J.
Speaker 1: Bahamas Jacob's big big thing Jonathan Strickland aka the Twister.
Speaker 3: I like Jonathan Strickland too. We give him a lot
Speaker 3: of crap. We sort of couched him as this sort
Speaker 3: of villain in our universe, but we like spending time
Speaker 3: with Jonathan too. I don't want his feelings started thinking
Speaker 3: that he play a shinier, newer puzzle related person behind this.
Speaker 1: Very nice and I'm glad. I think it's an important
Speaker 1: point for us to make. But peek behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: It was Jonathan's idea to be the bad guy for
Speaker 1: this show, and he wanted to be a heel, always
Speaker 1: been and that's the phrase he used. So he is
Speaker 1: our number one heel. We don't need to Achilles heel.
Speaker 1: We got quister heel huge days.
Speaker 3: Alex Williams, who composed this theme, christopherraciota Is and he
Speaker 3: Eves Jeff Coates here in spirit Max. I'll thank you again,
Speaker 3: Ben already did sorry we last do so many of these,
Speaker 3: I can't recall. You're awesome and this is a great episode.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for the crack research and Ben,
Speaker 3: thanks to you as well.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be back. By the way, I'm glad
Speaker 1: this didn't turn into a jeremiahed against encyclopedias. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time, folks.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.