Book People Archive

Re: Encylopedic Mystery

Charles: Speaking as one who has no actual knowledge of the 
encyclopedia in question...
             
You probably have an encyclopedia that is laid out as a 
micropedia/macropedia, which Encyclopedias sometimes are. Most 
notably, the 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1974 
which was divided into three parts: Micropaedia (Ready Reference), 
Macropaedia (Knowledge in Depth), and Propaedia (Outline of 
Knowledge).

[Side note: for the ultimate in naval gazing, read the Britannica's 
entry for itself at
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,33170+1+32600,00.html ]

At 8:44 PM -0500 on 1/23/01, Charles P. Hall wrote:


>I inherited an 1899 encyclopedia ("World Wide Encylopedia and
>Gazetteer"), published in 1899 by the Christian Herald and Werner House.
>It consists of 12 volumes.
>
>Here's the mystery, Volumes I-VIII cover A-ZYMOTIC, Volumes IX-XII cover
>AACHEN-ZYLONITE. That's right, the alphabet starts over in the middle of
>the series.
>            
>As near as I can tell there are very few articles in common. Those that
>do show up in both are extremely short in the first set, much longer in
>the second. But most articles are not duplicated.
>
>Bindings, print style and copyright pages are all the same. Can anyone
>explain what was going on back then? I've been pondering it for years
>and have never found any pattern to explain which articles are in which
>section!
-- 

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