After 244 years, Encyclopedia Britannica stops printing

[rumborak]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/03/13/encyclopaedia-britannica-online_n_1343263.html

Bummer, but I guess to be expected.

rumborak

[black_biff_stadler]

Wikipedia 1, Encyclopedia Britannica 0

[El Barto]

Unfortunate, but I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long.  Growing up I thought encyclopedias were awesome.  And there really is a wonderful quality to having knowledge in printed form.  You might find the same data online, but having it in a big, expensive book adds a sense of permanence to it which makes it seem more credible. 

[BlobVanDam]

Doesn't surprise me in the least. I'd kind of forgotten they were still printing them at all.
It is a shame to not have hard copies of information anymore, but with the speed of everything these days, an annual encyclopedia for that kind of price just can't be justified for most people considering how easily information can be obtained in realtime from the internet.

[masterthes]

But what is this guy going to do now?


 
     

[jasc15]

But what is this guy going to do now?


 
     

ha! I was thinking of those commercials when I heard about this, but I couldnt remember what the dude looked like.

We had a World Book encyclopedia from 1989 or so which was in my bedroom growing up, and I used them for many school projects. I remember the article on the human body had layers of transparent pages that superimposed the different systems on eachother. Another article that stands out in my mind still is the one on Saudi Arabia. I remember the first picture being of huge bright orange sand dunes, and I thought the whole country looked like that. They are still in good shape at my parents house. They came with an index book, and a 2 volume dictionary.