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Propædia

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An optical disc is a flat, usually disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid of a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side.

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109-537: The one-volume Propædia is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica , intended as a compendium and topical organization of the 12-volume Micropædia and the 17-volume Macropædia , which are organized alphabetically. Introduced in 1974 with the 15th edition, the Propædia and Micropædia were intended to replace the Index of the 14th edition; however, after widespread criticism,

218-449: A laser or stamping machine , and can be accessed when the data path is illuminated with a laser diode in an optical disc drive that spins the disc at speeds of about 200 to 4,000 RPM or more, depending on the drive type, disc format, and the distance of the read head from the center of the disc (outer tracks are read at a higher data speed due to higher linear velocities at the same angular velocities ). Most optical discs exhibit

327-573: A 12 cm compact disc. Other factors that affect data storage density include: the existence of multiple layers of data on the disc, the method of rotation ( Constant linear velocity (CLV), Constant angular velocity (CAV), or zoned-CAV), the composition of lands and pits, and how much margin is unused is at the center and the edge of the disc. Types of Optical Discs: In the Netherlands in 1969, Philips Research physicist , Pieter Kramer invented an optical videodisc in reflective mode with

436-586: A Canadian company, Optical Recording Corp.) in the 1980s. Both Gregg's and Russell's disc are floppy media read in transparent mode, which imposes serious drawbacks, after this were developed four generations of optical drive that includes Laserdisc (1969), WORM (1979), Compact Discs (1984), DVD (1995), Blu-ray (2005), HD-DVD (2006), more formats are currently under development. From the start optical discs were used to store broadcast-quality analog video, and later digital media such as music or computer software. The LaserDisc format stored analog video signals for

545-606: A characteristic iridescence as a result of the diffraction grating formed by their grooves. This side of the disc contains the actual data and is typically coated with a transparent material, usually lacquer . The reverse side of an optical disc usually has a printed label, sometimes made of paper but often printed or stamped onto the disc itself. Unlike the 3 1 ⁄ 2 -inch floppy disk , most optical discs do not have an integrated protective casing and are therefore susceptible to data transfer problems due to scratches, fingerprints, and other environmental problems. Blu-rays have

654-604: A chart appended to the Chemistry article, and would go on to re-write that article in the 1801 supplement (see below), and John Robison , Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, who wrote several well-regarded articles on sciences then called natural philosophy . The third edition established the foundation of the Britannica as an important and definitive reference work for much of the next century. This edition

763-436: A clumsy way, often referring back to the encyclopedia, essentially making the reader look everything up twice. What was needed was a completely new edition from the ground up. This was to be accomplished with the magnificent seventh edition. Optical media Optical discs can store analog information (e.g. Laserdisc ), digital information (e.g. DVD ), or store both on the same disc (e.g. CD Video ). Their main uses are

872-414: A coating called durabis that mitigates these problems. Optical discs are usually between 7.6 and 30 cm (3.0 and 11.8 in) in diameter, with 12 cm (4.7 in) being the most common size. The so-called program area that contains the data commonly starts 25 millimetres away from the center point. A typical disc is about 1.2 mm (0.047 in) thick, while the track pitch (distance from

981-466: A competing format, the HD DVD . A standard Blu-ray disc can hold about 25 GB of data, a DVD about 4.7 GB, and a CD about 700 MB. The following formats go beyond the current third-generation discs and have the potential to hold more than one terabyte (1 TB ) of data and at least some are meant for cold data storage in data centers : Announced but not released: In 2004, development of

1090-600: A conservative publication in reaction to the radical French Encyclopédie of Diderot published between 1751 and 1766. In the royal dedication penned on 10 December 1800, Gleig elaborated on the editorial purpose of the Britannica The French Encyclopédie had been accused, and justly accused, of having disseminated far and wide the seeds of anarchy and atheism. If the Encyclopædia Britannica shall in any degree counteract

1199-742: A consortium of manufacturers (Sony, Philips, Toshiba , Panasonic ) developed the second generation of the optical disc, the DVD . The DVD disc appeared after the CD-ROM had become widespread in society. Third-generation optical discs are used for distributing high-definition video and videogames and support greater data storage capacities, accomplished with short-wavelength visible-light lasers and greater numerical apertures. Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD uses blue-violet lasers and focusing optics of greater aperture, for use with discs with smaller pits and lands, thereby greater data storage capacity per layer. In practice,

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1308-537: A disc is usually recoverable from a defective optical drive by pushing an unsharp needle into the emergency ejection pinhole, and has no point of immediate water ingress and no integrated circuitry. As the media itself only is accessed through a laser beam and has no internal control circuitry, it cannot contain malicious hardware in the same way as so-called rubber-duckies or USB killers . Like any data storage media, optical discs can contain malicious data, they are able to contain and spread malware - as happened in

1417-468: A greater number than any critic whatever. Men who are acquainted with the innumerable difficulties of attending the execution of a work of such an extensive nature will make proper allowances. To these we appeal, and shall rest satisfied with the judgment they pronounce. Smellie strove to make Britannica as usable as possible, saying that "utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither

1526-468: A light through the disc, as different dye and material combinations have different colors. Blu-ray Disc recordable discs do not usually use an organic dye recording layer, instead using an inorganic recording layer. Those that do are known as low-to-high (LTH) discs and can be made in existing CD and DVD production lines, but are of lower quality than traditional Blu-ray recordable discs. File systems specifically created for optical discs are ISO9660 and

1635-682: A modern technical dictionary, an approach that the Britannica's' management described as "dismembering the sciences". Although anticipated by Dennis de Coetlogon , the idea for this "new plan" is generally ascribed to Colin Macfarquhar, although William Smellie claimed it as his own invention. Smellie wrote most of the first edition, borrowing liberally from the authors of his era, including Voltaire , Benjamin Franklin , Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson . He later said: I wrote most of it, my lad, and snipped out from books enough material for

1744-693: A more ambitious third edition was begun a few years later. The long period of time during which this edition was written makes the later volumes more updated than the earlier ones. Volume 10, published in 1783 after the Revolutionary War was over, gives in the entry for Virginia: "Virginia, late one of the British colonies, now one of the United States of North America..." but the entry in Volume 2 for Boston, published in 1778, states: "Boston,

1853-509: A problem through the sixth edition and the material was not used. The supplements had to be purchased separately. Andrew Bell died in 1809, one year before the fourth edition was finished. In 1815, his heirs began producing the fifth edition but sold it to Archibald Constable , who finished it; Millar was again the editor. Completed in 1817, the fifth edition sold for 36 pounds sterling ( 2011: £2,200 ) and consisted of 20 volumes with 16,017 pages and 582 plates. In 1816, Bell's trustees sold

1962-470: A protective layer read by a focused laser beam U.S. patent 5,068,846 , filed 1972, issued 1991. Kramer's physical format is used in all optical discs. In 1975, Philips and MCA began to work together, and in 1978, commercially much too late, they presented their long-awaited Laserdisc in Atlanta . MCA delivered the discs and Philips the players. However, the presentation was a commercial failure, and

2071-415: A similar 302 pages in the second edition). The 79-page "Agriculture" of the third was entirely and excellently re-written, and is 225 pages, for the fourth edition. Sixty pages of new information were added onto the end of "America," which grew to 138 pages, with an index and new maps. " Entomology " was expanded from eight pages and one plate in the third edition to 98 pages and four plates in the fourth, with

2180-420: A three-page index. Human "Physiology" was entirely re-written, and went from 60 pages to 80, with an index. "Physics," on the other hand, is unchanged from the third. In addition, some long articles appear for the first time in the fourth edition. "Geology" is new, even though the word had been coined in 1735. Accordingly, the third edition's 30-page entry "Earth," as well as its 24-page article "Earthquake," and

2289-585: A twentieth-century scheme for the organization of knowledge that is more comprehensive than any other and that also accommodates the intellectual heterodoxy of our time. The lead author was Nigel Calder , who wrote the introduction "The Universe of the Physicist, the Chemist, and the Astronomer". The lead author was Peter John Wyllie , who wrote the introduction "The Great Globe Itself". The lead author

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2398-542: A visible-light laser (usually red); the shorter wavelength and greater numerical aperture allow a narrower light beam, permitting smaller pits and lands in the disc. In the DVD format, this allows 4.7 GB storage on a standard 12 cm, single-sided, single-layer disc; alternatively, smaller media, such as the DataPlay format, can have capacity comparable to that of the larger, standard compact 12 cm disc. In 1995,

2507-484: A way of supporting their favorite works while getting something tangible in return and also since audio CDs (alongside vinyl records and cassette tapes ) contain uncompressed audio without the artifacts introduced by lossy compression algorithms like MP3 , and Blu-rays offer better image and sound quality than streaming media, without visible compression artifacts, due to higher bitrates and more available storage space. However, Blu-rays may sometimes be torrented over

2616-407: Is a new listing as well. After "Science" is a new 24-page article "Amusements In Science", which is a virtual Mr. Wizard for the opening of the 19th century. The majority of copy in the fourth edition, however, is unchanged from the third. Large blocks of text were carried over, line-by-line, unchanged in their typesetting, with some minor editing here and there. For example, the "Boston" article in

2725-479: Is caused by the classical element of fire . He seems to have been swayed by William Jones ' Essay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy (1762), which in turn was based on John Hutchinson's MA thesis , Moses' Principia , which was written in 1724 but rejected by Oxford University . Nevertheless, Gleig was sanguine about the errors of the third edition, echoing William Smellie 's sentiment in

2834-552: Is found at the end of Vol. 10. It does not have its own title page, but merely follows with pagination continuing from 8996 to 9200. The appendix introduces articles on Entomology, Ichthyology, Weather, Hindus (spelled Gentoos), and others, and contains many new biographies, including one of Captain James Cook. It curiously contains 25 new pages on Air, which give very little new information about air itself, but mainly cover hot air ballooning, one of Tytler's hobbies. The first page of

2943-476: Is the reason why they are still (as of 2020) widely used by gaming consoles, like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One X . As of 2020, it is unusual for PC games to be available in a physical format like Blu-ray. Discs should not have any stickers and should not be stored together with paper; papers must be removed from the jewel case before storage. Discs should be handled by the edges to prevent scratching, with

3052-532: The Britannica as a whole, the Outline has three types of goals: According to Mortimer J. Adler , the designer of the Propaedia , all articles in the full Britannica were designed to fit into the Outline of Knowledge . The Outline has 167 sections, which are categorized into 41 divisions and then into 10 parts. Each part has an introductory essay written by the same individual responsible for developing

3161-461: The Britannica for nearly a century (until its ninth edition): As the force of love prevails, sighs grow deeper; a tremor affects the heart and pulse; the countenance is alternately pale and red; the voice is suppressed in the sauces; the eyes grow dim; cold sweats break out; sleep absents itself, at least until the morning; the secretions become disturbed; and a loss of appetite, a hectic fever, melancholy, or perhaps madness, if not death, constitutes

3270-518: The Britannica have been developed, both online and on optical media . Since the early 1930s, the Britannica has developed several "spin-off" products to leverage its reputation as a reliable reference work and educational tool. The encyclopedia as known up to 2012 was incurring unsustainable losses and the print editions were ended, but it continues on the Internet. Encyclopedias of various types had been published since antiquity, beginning with

3379-410: The Britannica restored the Index as a two-volume set in 1985. The core of the Propædia is its Outline of Knowledge , which seeks to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge. However, the Propædia also has several appendices listing the staff members, advisors and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica . The last edition of the print Britannica was published in 2010. Like

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3488-404: The Britannica's owner Andrew Bell ; unfortunately, the two men quarreled and they never spoke for the last ten years of Bell's life (1799–1809). Bonar was friendly to the article authors, however, and conceived the plan of paying them as well as the article reviewers, and of allowing them to retain copyright for separate publication of their work. The Britannica explicitly positioned itself as

3597-458: The USB flash drive . This trend is expected to continue as USB flash drives continue to increase in capacity and drop in price. Additionally, music, movies, games, software and TV shows purchased, shared or streamed over the Internet has significantly reduced the number of audio CDs, video DVDs and Blu-ray discs sold annually. However, audio CDs and Blu-rays are still preferred and bought by some, as

3706-509: The Universal Disk Format (UDF). ISO9660 can be extended using the "Joliet" extension to store longer file names than standalone ISO9660. The "Rock Ridge" extension can store even longer file names and Unix/Linux-style file permissions, but is not recognized by Windows and by DVD players and similar devices that can read data discs. For cross-platform compatibility, multiple file systems can co-exist on one disc and reference

3815-438: The long s in print. The long s started being phased out of English publications shortly after the turn of the 19th century, and by 1817 it was archaic. The Supplement To The Fifth edition (see below), as well as the sixth edition, used a modern font with a short s. While the sixth volume of the fifth edition was being printed, Constable became owner of Britannica, as well as Bonar's third edition supplements. Legal disputes over

3924-424: The wavelength of the laser, so wavelength is a limiting factor upon the amount of information that can be stored in a given physical area on the disc. The infrared range is beyond the long-wavelength end of the visible light spectrum, so it supports less density than shorter-wavelength visible light. One example of high-density data storage capacity, achieved with an infrared laser, is 700 MB of net user data for

4033-618: The "Great Ideas" in Adler's Great Books of the Western World series. (The Great Books were also published by the Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. ) Adler stresses in his book, A Guidebook to Learning: For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom , that the ten categories should not be taken as hierarchical but as circular. The whole of the Propædia's synoptic outline of knowledge deserves to be read carefully. It represents

4142-498: The Library of Congress archiving efforts. The STC disks utilized a sealed cartridge with an optical window for protection U.S. patent 4,542,495 . The CD-ROM format was developed by Sony and Philips , introduced in 1984, as an extension of Compact Disc Digital Audio and adapted to hold any form of digital data. The same year, Sony demonstrated a LaserDisc data storage format, with a larger data capacity of 3.28 GB. In

4251-533: The Music Corporation of America bought Gregg's patents and his company, Gauss Electrophysics. American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record a digital signal on an optical transparent foil that is lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp. Russell's patent application was first filed in 1966 and he was granted a patent in 1970. Following litigation, Sony and Philips licensed Russell's patents (then held by

4360-747: The Wisdom of Your Councils, and the Vigour of Your Fleets and Armies, Your MAJESTY may be enabled soon to restore Peace to Europe; that You may again have leisure to extend Your Royal Care to the Improvement of Arts, and the Advancement of Knowledge; that You May Reign long over a Free, Happy and a Loyal People... The third edition is also famous for its bold article on "Motion", which erroneously rejects Isaac Newton 's theory of gravitation . Instead, Gleig, or more likely, James Tytler , wrote that gravity

4469-445: The advertisement claimed that these articles would be included in this manner, they were not, and the author of the preface to the seventh edition states that none of this material entered the main body until that edition, and even gives a list of the articles which were. Almost no changes were made to the text, it was basically a remake of the fifth with very minor updates. All in all, the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions are virtually

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4578-426: The architecture of Noah's Ark in detail (illustrated with a copperplate engraving). The second edition also reports a cure for tuberculosis : He chose a spot of ground on which no plants had been sown, and there he made a hole large and deep enough to admit the patient up to the chin. The interstices of the pit were then carefully filled up with the fresh mould, so that the earth might everywhere come in contact with

4687-437: The audible frequency range to 20 kHz without aliasing, with an additional tolerance to allow the use of less-than-perfect analog audio pre-filters to remove any higher frequencies. The first version of the standard allowed up to 74 minutes of music or 650 MB of data storage. Second-generation optical discs were for storing great amounts of data, including broadcast-quality digital video. Such discs usually are read with

4796-480: The books nor their authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind". The first edition was reprinted in London , with slight variants on the title page and a different preface, by Edward and Charles Dilly in 1773 and by John Donaldson in 1775. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the 1st edition , Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. published a facsimile of the 1st edition, even including "age spots" on

4905-705: The capital of New England in North America, ....The following is a description of this capital before the commencement of the present American war." The causes of the Revolution are outlined concisely by Tytler in the article "Colonies" thus: Because several of the colonies had claimed the soul and exclusive right of imposing taxes upon themselves, the statute 6 Geo. III. c. 12 expressly declares, that all his Majesty's colonies in America, have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate to and dependent upon

5014-649: The case of the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal in 2005 where Sony misused discs by pre-loading them with malware. Many types of optical discs are factory-pressed or finalized write once read many storage devices and would therefore not be effective at spreading computer worms that are designed to spread by copying themselves onto optical media, because data on those discs can not be modified once pressed or written. However, re-writable disc technologies (such as CD-RW ) are able to spread this type of malware. The first recorded historical use of an optical disc

5123-494: The center of one track to the center of the next) ranges from 1.6 μm (for CDs) to 320 nm (for Blu-ray discs ). An optical disc is designed to support one of three recording types: read-only (e.g.: CD and CD-ROM ), recordable (write-once, e.g. CD-R ), or re-recordable (rewritable, e.g. CD-RW ). Write-once optical discs commonly have an organic dye (may also be a ( Phthalocyanine ) Azo dye , mainly used by Verbatim , or an oxonol dye, used by Fujifilm ) recording layer between

5232-1053: The collected works of Aristotle and the Natural History of Pliny the Elder , the latter having 2493 articles in 37 books. Encyclopedias were published in Europe and China throughout the Middle Ages , such as the Satyricon of Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (early 5th century), the Speculum majus ( Great Mirror ) of Vincent of Beauvais (1250), and Encyclopedia septem tomis distincta ( A Seven-Part Encyclopedia ) by Johann Heinrich Alsted (1630). Most early encyclopedias did not include biographies of living people and were written in Latin , although some encyclopedias were translated into English, such as De proprietatibus rerum (On

5341-454: The complete specifications for these devices. With the help of this kind of technology the possibility of representing the analog signal into digital signal was exploited to a great level. For this purpose, the 16-bit samples of the analog signal were taken at the rate of 44,100 samples per second . This sample rate was based on the Nyquist rate of 40,000 samples per second required to capture

5450-401: The computer's optical disc drive or corresponding disc player. File operations of traditional mass storage devices such as flash drives , memory cards and hard drives can be simulated using a UDF live file system. For computer data backup and physical data transfer, optical discs such as CDs and DVDs are gradually being replaced with faster, smaller solid-state devices, especially

5559-614: The cooperation ended. In Japan and the U.S., Pioneer succeeded with the Laserdisc until the advent of the DVD. In 1979, Philips and Sony , in consortium, successfully developed the audio compact disc . In 1979, Exxon STAR Systems in Pasadena, CA built a computer controlled WORM drive that utilized thin film coatings of Tellurium and Selenium on a 12" diameter glass disk. The recording system utilized blue light at 457 nm to record and red light at 632.8 nm to read. STAR Systems

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5668-632: The copyright of the third edition supplements continued, however, and for this reason a new supplement was written by Constable's company, which was completed in 1824. After securing sole-ownership rights in December 1816, Constable began work on a supplement to the fifth edition, even before the fifth edition had been released (1817). The supplement was completed in April 1824, consisting of six volumes with 4,933 pages, 125 plates, 9 maps, 3 "dissertations" and 160 biographies, mainly of people who had died within

5777-464: The data in large amount. So, there was the need of finding some more data storing techniques. As a result, it was found that by using optical means large data storing devices can be made that in turn gave rise to the optical discs. The very first application of this kind was the compact disc (CD), which was used in audio systems. Sony and Philips developed the first generation of the CDs in the mid-1980s with

5886-465: The distribution of home video , but commercially lost to the VHS videocassette format, due mainly to its high cost and non-re-recordability; other first-generation disc formats were designed only to store digital data and were not initially capable of use as a digital video medium. Most first-generation disc devices had an infrared laser reading head. The minimum size of the laser spot is proportional to

5995-401: The distribution of media and data, and long-term archival . The encoding material sits atop a thicker substrate (usually polycarbonate ) that makes up the bulk of the disc and forms a dust defocusing layer. The encoding pattern follows a continuous, spiral path covering the entire disc surface and extending from the innermost track to the outermost track. The data are stored on the disc with

6104-465: The effective multimedia presentation capacity is improved with enhanced video data compression codecs such as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 . Announced but not released: The third generation optical disc was developed in 2000–2006 and was introduced as Blu-ray Disc. First movies on Blu-ray Discs were released in June 2006. Blu-ray eventually prevailed in a high definition optical disc format war over

6213-442: The engravings in the section on midwifery, depicting childbirth in clinical detail, were sufficiently shocking to prompt some readers to tear those engravings out of the volume. The key idea that set the Britannica apart was to group related topics together into longer essays, that were then organized alphabetically. Previous English encyclopedias had generally listed related terms separately in their alphabetical order, rather like

6322-469: The enormous profit potential of encyclopedias. Although not all encyclopedias succeeded commercially, their elements sometimes inspired future encyclopedias; for example, the failed two-volume A Universal History of Arts and Sciences of Dennis de Coetlogon (published 1745) grouped its topics into long self-contained treatises, an organization that likely inspired the "new plan" of the Britannica . The first encyclopedia to include biographies of living people

6431-399: The entire 81 pages of the third edition, but appended 52 new pages after it, and an index for the 133-page article. The copyright of the material in the supplement to the third edition was held by Thomas Bonar , who asked 20,000 pounds sterling for it, which Bell declined. The supplemental material was licensed for the fourth edition for 100 pounds, but this copyright issue remained

6540-525: The famous Roget's Thesaurus and a former secretary of the Royal Society , contributed the entry for physiology . Thomas Young's article on Egypt included the translation of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone . The supplement was compiled, for the first five volumes, at a pace which would have given it more than the 6 volumes it eventually would consist of; the alphabet from A-M

6649-545: The first edition quoted above: For perfection seems to be incompatible with the nature of works constructed on such a plan, and embracing such a variety of subjects. The first "American" encyclopedia, Dobson's Encyclopædia , was based almost entirely on the third edition of the Britannica and published at nearly the same time (1788–1798), together with an analogous supplement (1803), by the Scottish-born printer, Thomas Dobson . The first United States copyright law

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6758-466: The first edition, the second had five times as many long articles (150), including "Scotland" (84 pages), "Optics" (132 pages), and "Medicine" (309 pages), which had their own indices. The second edition was published in 181 numbers from 21 June 1777 to 18 September 1784; these numbers were bound into 10 volumes dated 1778–1783, having 8,595 pages and 340 plates again engraved by Andrew Bell . A pagination error caused page 8000 to follow page 7099. Most of

6867-412: The fourth edition were sent to bookbinders in 1810, dated that year for all volumes. The editor was James Millar , a physician, who was good at scientific topics but criticized for being "slow & dilatory & not well qualified". The mathematical articles of Prof. Wallace were widely praised in the fourth edition. Overall, the fourth edition was a mild expansion of the third, from 18 to 20 volumes, and

6976-409: The geological sections of its article " Natural History ", were dropped, as these topics are found in the fourth edition's newly written article, which is 78 pages long and has its own index. For other examples, the fourth edition has a 96-page article " Conchology ", which listing does not appear in the third or its supplement, and " Erpetology ", 60 pages long in the fourth edition, with a 3-page index,

7085-455: The imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; who have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects to the crown of Great Britain in all cases whatsoever. And the attempting to enforce this by other acts of Parliament, penalties, and at last by military power, gave rise, as is well known, to the present revolt of our colonies. A 204-page appendix, written in 1784,

7194-414: The internet, but torrenting may not be an option for some, due to restrictions put in place by ISPs on legal or copyright grounds, low download speeds or not having enough available storage space, since the content may weigh up to several dozen gigabytes. Blu-rays may be the only option for those looking to play large games without having to download them over an unreliable or slow internet connection, which

7303-482: The introduction "Knowing How and Knowing Why". The lead author was Wilfred Cantwell Smith , who wrote the introduction "Religion as Symbolism". The lead author was Jacques Barzun , who wrote the introduction "The Point and Pleasure of Reading History". The lead author was Mortimer J. Adler , who wrote the introduction "Knowledge Become Self-conscious". Section 4.2.1 uses transparencies of organ systems originally commissioned by Parke-Davis . Similar in design to

7412-480: The late 1980s and early 1990s, Optex, Inc. of Rockville, MD, built an erasable optical digital video disc system U.S. patent 5,113,387 using Electron Trapping Optical Media (ETOM) U.S. patent 5,128,849 . Although this technology was written up in Video Pro Magazine's December 1994 issue promising "the death of the tape", it was never marketed. Magnetic disks found limited applications in storing

7521-463: The maps of this edition (eighteen of them) are found in a single 195-page article, " Geography ". The second edition improved greatly upon the first, but is still notable for the large amount of now-archaic information it contained. For example, "Chemistry" goes into great detail on an obsolete system of what would now be called alchemy, in which earth, air, water and fire are named elements containing various amounts of phlogiston . Tytler also describes

7630-499: The ones found at the end of the seventh and further editions of Britannica. This supplement had remarkably illustrious contributors. Constable was friends with Sir Walter Scott , who contributed the articles "Chivalry", "Romance", and "Drama". To edit the supplement, Constable hired Macvey Napier , who recruited other eminent contributors such as Sir Humphry Davy , Jean-Baptiste Biot , James Mill , William Hazlitt , David Ricardo , and Thomas Malthus . Peter Mark Roget , compiler of

7739-457: The outline for that part, which was done in consultation and collaboration with a handful of other scholars. In all, 86 men and one woman were involved in developing the Outline of Knowledge . The Outline was an eight-year project of Mortimer J. Adler , published 22 years after he published a similar effort (the Syntopicon ) that attempts to provide an overview of the relationships among

7848-425: The paper. This has been periodically reprinted and is still part of Britannica's product line. After the success of the first edition, a more ambitious second edition was begun in 1776, with the addition of history and biography articles. Smellie declined to be editor, principally because he objected to the addition of biography. Macfarquhar took over the role himself, aided by pharmacist James Tytler , M.A., who

7957-419: The patient's body. In this situation the patient suffered to remain till he began to shiver or felt himself uneasy...The patient was then taken out, and, after being wrapped in a linen cloth, was placed upon a mattress, and two hours afterwards his whole body was rubbed with the ointment composed of the leaves of the solanum nigrum and hog's lard. and a somewhat melancholy article on " Love " that persisted in

8066-464: The plates have very minor revisions, but they are all basically Bell's work from the fourth or earlier editions, and these new names were probably added for business reasons involving copyright royalties. W. Archibald was probably Constable himself. Being a reprint of the fourth, set in the same type, Encyclopædia Britannica's fifth edition was one of the last publications in the English language to use

8175-529: The preceding 30 years. This supplement contained a rudimentary form of an index, listing the 669 articles in alphabetical order at the end of volume six, by volume but not page number, but it did not contain any sort of cross referencing. The index was called "Table of the Articles and Treatises Contained in This Work" and was 9 pages long. It was nothing to be compared to a typical encyclopedia index, such as

8284-447: The preface to the fifth edition, dated December 1, 1817, as its own. Only the short page, "Advertisement To The Sixth Edition", which was bound in volume 1 after the forward and dated January, 1822, set it apart. In that advertisement, it is claimed that some geographical articles would be updated, and that the articles in the supplement to the third edition would be inserted into the encyclopedia in their proper alphabetical places. Although

8393-455: The printer. With pastepot and scissors I composed it! The vivid prose and easy navigation of the first edition led to strong demand for a second. Although this edition has been faulted for its imperfect scholarship, Smellie argued that the Britannica should be given the benefit of the doubt: With regard to errors in general, whether falling under the denomination of mental, typographical or accidental, we are conscious of being able to point out

8502-499: The properties of things) (1240) by Bartholomeus Anglicus . However, English-composed encyclopedias appeared in the 18th century, beginning with Lexicon technicum, or A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences by John Harris (two volumes, published 1704 and 1710, respectively), which contained articles by such contributors as Isaac Newton . Ephraim Chambers wrote a very popular two-volume Cyclopedia in 1728, which went through multiple editions and awakened publishers to

8611-405: The rights to the Britannica for 14,000 pounds to Archibald Constable, an apprentice bookseller, who had been involved in its publication from 1788. To secure the copyrights for the third edition supplement, Constable gave Bonar a one-third stake in the Britannica ; after Bonar's death in 1814, Constable bought his rights to the Britannica for 4,500 pounds sterling. The fifth edition

8720-586: The rights to the Britannica were sold on auction; they were eventually bought on 16 July 1828 for 6,150 pounds sterling by a partnership of four men: Adam Black (a publisher), Alexander Wight (a banker), Abram Thomson (a bookbinder) and Thomas Allen, the proprietor of the Caledonian Mercury . Not long after, Black bought out his partners and ownership of the Britannica passed to the Edinburgh publishing firm of A & C Black . Britannica by

8829-470: The sad catastrophe. Like the first edition, the second was sold in sections by subscription at the printing shop of Colin MacFarquhar . When finished in 1784, complete sets were sold at Charles Elliot's bookshop in Edinburgh for 10 pounds, unbound. More than 1,500 copies of the second edition were sold this way by Elliot in less than one year, making the second edition enough of a financial success that

8938-408: The same as each other. Rather than revising the main text of the encyclopedia with each edition, Constable chose to add all updates to the supplement. It's probable that the sixth edition only exists because of the need to remove the long s , which had gone out of style, from the font, which required the whole encyclopedia to be re-typeset. The Supplement to the fifth edition was finished in 1824, and

9047-606: The same files. Optical discs are often stored in special cases sometimes called jewel cases and are most commonly used for digital preservation , storing music (e.g. for use in a CD player ), video (e.g. for use in a Blu-ray player), or data and programs for personal computers (PC), as well as offline hard copy data distribution due to lower per-unit prices than other types of media. The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) promoted standardized optical storage formats. Libraries and archives enact optical media preservation procedures to ensure continued usability in

9156-404: The sixth edition was in some regards hopelessly out of date. The supplement to the third edition contained updates which were not included in it, and which had become dated themselves anyway, the fourth edition expanded the text somewhat but revised very little, and the fifth and sixth were just reprints of the fourth. The supplement to the fourth/fifth/sixth edition addressed the issue of updates in

9265-423: The substrate and the reflective layer. Rewritable discs typically contain an alloy recording layer composed of a phase change material , most often AgInSbTe , an alloy of silver , indium , antimony , and tellurium . Azo dyes were introduced in 1996 and phthalocyanine only began to see wide use in 2002. The type of dye and the material used on the reflective layer on an optical disc may be determined by shining

9374-678: The supplement begins with the words "Appendix containing articles omitted and others further explained or improved, together with corrections of errors and of wrong references." The appendix also includes 10 plates, namely CCCXIV to CCCXXIII. The third edition was published from 1788 to 1797 in 300 weekly numbers (1 shilling apiece); these numbers were collected and sold unbound in 30 parts (10 shilling, sixpence each), and finally in 1797 they were bound in 18 volumes with 14,579 pages and 542 plates, and given title pages dated 1797 for all volumes. Macfarquhar again edited this edition up to "Mysteries" but died in 1793 (aged 48) of "mental exhaustion"; his work

9483-422: The tendency of that pestiferous work, even these two volumes will not be wholly unworthy of your Majesty's attention. The fourth edition was begun in 1800 and completed in 1810, comprising 20 volumes with 16,033 pages and 581 plates engraved by Andrew Bell . As with the third edition, in which title pages were not printed until the set was complete, and all volumes were given title pages dated 1797, title pages for

9592-465: The third edition contains the sentence, "The following is a description of this capital before the commencement of the present American war." This line is exactly as it had appeared in the second edition, which was written during the war. (The war had been over for years when the third edition was published). In the fourth edition, the word "present" was replaced with "late", the rest of the article remaining entirely unchanged. The article "America" reprinted

9701-701: The three-dimensional Visible Man and Visible Woman dolls designed by sculptor Marcel Jovine , successive plastic sheets reveal different layers of human anatomy . History of the Encyclop%C3%A6dia Britannica#First version (1974–1984) The Encyclopædia Britannica has been published continuously since 1768, appearing in fifteen official editions. Several editions have been amended with multi-volume "supplements" (third, fifth/sixth), consisted of previous editions with added supplements (10th, and 12th/13th) or gone drastic re-organizations (15th). In recent years, digital versions of

9810-1143: The thumb on the inner edge of the disc. The ISO Standard 18938:2014 is about best optical disc handling techniques. Optical disc cleaning should never be done in a circular pattern, to avoid concentric cirles from forming on the disc. Improper cleaning can scratch the disc. Recordable discs should not be exposed to light for extended periods of time. Optical discs should be stored in dry and cool conditions to increase longevity, with temperatures between -10 and 23 °C, never exceeding 32 °C, and with humidity never falling below 10%, with recommended storage at 20 to 50% of humidity without fluctuations of more than ±10%. Although optical discs are more durable than earlier audio-visual and data storage formats, they are susceptible to environmental and daily-use damage, if handled improperly. Optical discs are not prone to uncontrollable catastrophic failures such as head crashes , power surges , or exposure to water like hard disk drives and flash storage , since optical drives' storage controllers are not tied to optical discs themselves like with hard disk drives and flash memory controllers , and

9919-445: The time ripe for a new encyclopedia "compiled upon a new plan". Needing an editor, the two chose a 28-year-old scholar named William Smellie who was offered 200 pounds sterling to produce the encyclopedia in 100 parts (called "numbers" and equivalent to thick pamphlets), which were later bound into three volumes. The first number appeared on 10 December 1768 in Edinburgh, priced sixpence or 8 pence on finer paper. The Britannica

10028-463: Was René Dubos , who wrote the introduction "The Mysteries of Life". The lead author was Loren Eiseley , who wrote the introduction "The Cosmic Orphan". The lead author was Harold D. Lasswell , who wrote the introduction "Man the Social Animal". The lead author was Mark Van Doren , who wrote the introduction "The World of Art". The lead author was Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder , who wrote

10137-439: Was 261 pages long in the third, written by James Tytler , and had been re-written in that edition's supplement as a 191-page treatise by Thomas Thomson , appears in the fourth edition as an entirely new 358-page article, which, according to the preface to the fifth edition, was authored by Millar himself. The new treatise was necessary because the copyright to the supplement to the third, which included Thomson's excellent treatise,

10246-407: Was a corrected reprint of the fourth; there is virtually no change in the text. The errata are listed at the end of each volume of the fourth edition, and corrected in the fifth, but the number of errata is small and in some volumes there are none. The plates and plate numbers are all the same, but with the name A. Bell replaced with W. Archibald or other names on all plates, including the maps. Some of

10355-610: Was also enormously profitable, yielding 42,000 pounds sterling profit on the sale of roughly 10,000 copies. The third edition began the tradition (continued to this day) of dedicating the Britannica to the reigning British monarch, then King George III . In the Supplement to the Third Edition, Gleig called him "the Father of Your People, and enlightened Patron of Arts, Sciences and Literature", and expressed: ...that, by

10464-399: Was an exact reproduction of the Britannica 's 3rd edition. By contrast, Dobson's work had various corrections and amendments for American readers. A two-volume supplement to the third edition was published in 1801, having 1,624 pages and 50 copperplates by D. Lizars. A revised edition was published in 1803. This supplement was published by a wine-merchant, Thomas Bonar , the son-in-law of

10573-521: Was bought by Storage Technology Corporation (STC) in 1981 and moved to Boulder, CO. Development of the WORM technology was continued using 14" diameter aluminum substrates. Beta testing of the disk drives, originally labeled the Laser Storage Drive 2000 (LSD-2000), was only moderately successful. Many of the disks were shipped to RCA Laboratories (now David Sarnoff Research Center) to be used in

10682-485: Was in 1884 when Alexander Graham Bell , Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter recorded sound on a glass disc using a beam of light. Optophonie is a very early (1931) example of a recording device using light for both recording and playing back sound signals on a transparent photograph. An early analogue optical disc system existed in 1935, used on Welte's Lichttonorgel  [ de ] sampling organ. An early analog optical disc used for video recording

10791-498: Was invented by David Paul Gregg in 1958 and patented in the US in 1961 and 1969. This form of optical disc was a very early form of the DVD ( U.S. patent 3,430,966 ). It is of special interest that U.S. patent 4,893,297 , filed 1989, issued 1990, generated royalty income for Pioneer Corporation's DVA until 2007 —then encompassing the CD, DVD , and Blu-ray systems. In the early 1960s,

10900-400: Was known as an able writer and willing to work for a very low wage. Macfarquhar and Bell rescued Tytler from the debtors' sanctuary at Holyrood Palace, and employed him for seven years at 17 shillings per week. Tytler wrote many science and history articles and almost all of the minor articles; by Robert Burns ' estimate, Tytler wrote more than three-quarters of the second edition. Compared to

11009-452: Was not owned by Britannica. (Thomson would much later author the article for the seventh edition). The article "Electricity", 125 pages in the third edition, was completely re-written for the fourth edition and was 163 pages. By contrast, the 125-page " Metaphysics " of the third was largely unchanged for the fourth, and the 306-page "Medicine" of the third was only superficially edited in the fourth and of roughly equal length. (Medicine had been

11118-619: Was passed on 30 May 1790—although anticipated by Section 8 of Article I of the United States Constitution (ratified 4 March 1789)—but did not protect foreign publications such as the Britannica . Unauthorized copying of the Britannica in America was also a problem with the ninth edition (1889). Unlicensed copies were also sold in Dublin by James Moore under the title, Moore's Dublin Edition, Encyclopædia Britannica ; this

11227-571: Was published under the pseudonym "A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland", possibly referring to the many gentlemen who had bought subscriptions. By releasing the numbers in weekly instalments, the Britannica was completed in 1771, having 2,391 pages. The numbers were bound in three equally sized volumes covering A–B, C–L, and M–Z; an estimated 3,000 sets were eventually sold, priced at 12 pounds sterling apiece. The first edition also featured 160 copperplate illustrations engraved by Bell. Three of

11336-467: Was put into those five. It was apparently rushed to completion with volume 6, which contained the rest of the alphabet, viz: Constable also produced the sixth edition, which was completed in May, 1823. It was published in 40 half-volume parts, priced 16 shillings in boards (32 pounds for the set). The editor was Charles Maclaren . The sixth edition was a reprint of the fifth with a modern typeface. It even used

11445-431: Was sold with those sets, as well as with sets of the sixth edition, to be delivered at its completion. This supplement curiously was started during the production of the fifth edition but was not finished until after the 6th was completed. It also was sold as a unit for owners of the fourth edition, and became known as "Supplement to the 4th, 5th and 6th edition". Unfortunately, Constable went bankrupt on 19 January 1826 and

11554-538: Was taken over by George Gleig , later Bishop Gleig of Brechin (consecrated 30 October 1808). James Tytler again contributed heavily to the authorship, up to the letter M. Andrew Bell , Macfarquhar's partner, bought the rights to the Britannica from Macfarquhar's heirs. Nearly doubling the scope of the second edition, Macfarquhar's encyclopedic vision was finally realized. Recruited by Gleig, several illustrious authorities contributed to this edition, such as Thomas Thomson , who introduced modern chemical nomenclature in

11663-507: Was the 64-volume Grosses Universal-Lexicon (published 1732–1759) of Johann Heinrich Zedler , who argued that death alone should not render people notable. The Britannica was the idea of Colin Macfarquhar , a bookseller and printer, and Andrew Bell , an engraver, both of Edinburgh . They conceived of the Britannica as a conservative reaction to the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot (published 1751–1766), which

11772-483: Was updated in its historical, scientific, and biographical articles. Some of the long articles were entirely re-written for the fourth edition. For example, the 56-page "Botany" of the third edition was replaced in the fourth with a 270-page version by moving all the individual plant articles into one. Conversely, the 53-page " Metallurgy " of the third was removed, and replaced by the note "see Gilding, Parting, Purifying, Refining, Smithery." The article "Chemistry," which

11881-569: Was widely viewed as heretical. Ironically, the Encyclopédie had begun as a French translation of the popular English encyclopedia, Cyclopaedia published by Ephraim Chambers in 1728. Although later editions of Chambers' Cyclopaedia were still popular, and despite the commercial failure of other English encyclopedias, Macfarquhar and Bell were inspired by the intellectual ferment of the Scottish Enlightenment and thought

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