I believe that technology has been a part of our lives since the beginning of time. It is only recently however that we have the technology to do it without being the target of the latest viral marketing campaign. The internet, television, and even our phones have enabled us to connect with others and share memories and thoughts.
Yet the internet has enabled us to be completely disconnected from each other, and this disconnection has been exploited in a number of ways. The most obvious is the massive amounts of information that can be accessed and shared with one another. For example, even though the internet is a free and open platform, it still has hidden restrictions on what you can share.
We’ve seen this all before, I think. It was the same with the printing press where we all got exposed to a level of information that was entirely new. Yet in the early 1800s people were still able to share the knowledge they had accumulated.
In 1849, John Wesley Powell and his wife Sarah visited Mount Everest and wrote about their experiences of the ascent. The next year they published a book about their expedition and the impact their work might have on the future of the world. The book was so good we thought it would be a good idea to share it with the world in the form of a book.
Back then, books were expensive and extremely rare. A single copy of this book would have cost thousands of dollars.
A copy of “The Book of the Earth” sold for $3,000 in 1849, but because it was so rare it would have needed to be sold over many years. And that’s when the knowledge gathered by Powell and his wife became public. The Book of the Earth, like the first edition of “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” contained the knowledge of many people who had been involved in the early stages of the Earth’s history – scientists, explorers, and adventurers.
The first edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was printed in the year of its publication, 1813, and the book is the one that most people know about today. But it wasn’t until 1829 that the book was published in facsimile. This is a book that, in the words of Powell, “was designed not to become forgotten, but to be kept in print for the sake of those who had knowledge, and for the sake of those who would wish to know.
Encyclopaedias were printed for the simple reason that they were cheap to produce and everyone in the world needed a copy of the book. The first two editions were produced in a very short time of just a few months; there were only two copies printed. They were sold primarily to the Royal Society and were also printed for the American market. But the book was not meant to be a complete encyclopedia.
The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica printed in 1667 was the first to be produced and sold at a low price. The book was not intended to be a complete encyclopedia, but it did contain some of the best known facts and events of the world. By the time of the printing of the second edition in 1776, the book had grown so large that printing was not practical. The third edition was only printed in 1785, and only in a very small, very expensive edition.
There is a great deal of misinformation out there about the history of the encyclopedia. For example, the most important fact of the encyclopedia is that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was an act of God, not a natural disaster. It was not the result of natural disasters, but was the result of an act of God.
