6 ms·

>Later, I introduced the encyclopedia to my kids. They had never used a print encyclopedia, and they looked at me like I was an alien, almost as if I were speak

by jasode 3y ago

>Later, I introduced the encyclopedia to my kids. They had never used a print encyclopedia, and they looked at me like I was an alien, almost as if I were speaking a different language (such a trite expression, but man, is it accurate). I had hoped they could use the encyclopedia as an old-fashioned reference, but so far, they have completely and utterly rejected it, not even expressing interest or opening it once. That aspect of my plans for the encyclopedia has been a big failure. The kids' reaction makes perfect sense to me and I grew up with an encyclopedia set in the house. My family was poor so we couldn't afford the "nice" encyclopedia sets like Encyclopaedia Britannica. Instead, my mom bought the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia one-letter-at-a-time from the grocery store. E.g., the grocery store didn't have the entire A-to-Z set at the store. What happened was volume 'A' would be in the aisle near the checkout. You add that one book to your grocery chart. (One book wouldn't blow the whole household budget.) A few weeks later, the volume 'B' would appear. After a few months, you'd eventually end up with entire A to Z set. F&W was the "more affordable" encyclopedia and they brilliantly set up a "installment payment plan" by tapping into mom's weekly shopping habits. Very clever strategy to use supermarkets as the sales channel instead of commissioned door-to-door salesmen. But even that was too much money for us and my mom couldn't afford the entire set in one year. So the volumes she missed had to wait until next year with a new print edition which was a different color. So our encyclopedia set was a Frankenstein set combining different years. A lot of older HN readers will know what I'm talking about. I used that F&W extensively in school but I don't wish I had another set of books in the house. Today's Wikipedia is much better. It covers thousands of other niche subjects that a limited set like F&W could ever possibly include. And extensive hyperlinks to see how topic-X-leads-to-topic-Y.

jandrese 3y ago
The limitations of the old style encyclopedia are immediately obvious when you go to actually use it. Thousands of articles that only barely scratch the surface on the topic. Even then if you're interested in something even mildly obscure it won't be in there at all. Of course you couldn't use it as a source when writing a paper, and worst of all they didn't even provide the sourcing information for the articles that they did have (maybe nicer ones did? The ones at my library did not), so as a research tool they were near useless. I do remember that there was an exception for the Encyclopedia Britannica, which could be used as a source as long as it wasn't the only source. For some reason it was considered more scholarly than other encyclopedias.
- gumby 3y ago
  > The limitations of the old style encyclopedia are immediately obvious when you go to actually use it. Thousands of articles that only barely scratch the surface on the topic. This is a feature not a bug: encyclopedia articles are breadth-first introductions to topics. If you are just mildly curious about something you'll probably get what you need. If you want to know more you'll have a view of the "landscape" and so will probably understand a more specialized book better -- and even be better at finding the right specialized book in the library.
  - deepspace 3y ago
    I agree. We had a similar non-mainstream encyclopedia set (not F&W) when I was growing up. I was a voracious reader and, at some point, read them all back to back. That did not provide me with in-depth knowledge about anything, but even today I have a wide general knowledge, and I am interested in many subjects, some very obscure, which I credit to that encyclopedia. More importantly, the encyclopedia gave me an overview of human knowledge and helped me to figure out what I was most interested in. The articles about radio, radar, computers and such always fascinated me and, I think, steered me into a career in engineering.
  - heyoni 3y ago
    I wonder if that’s wikipedias intent with their simple initiative. You can pull up articles by adding simple in the domain to get a less comprehensive article.
  - njharman 3y ago
    Those features are all much better provided by The Internet. Including finding and ordering a specialized physical book if you need.
- wiredfool 3y ago
  That's not how you use them. (at least not in my family). It was a read the whole thing deal. So much random knowledge. We had the WorldBooks, but ran across Encyclopedia Britannica in the school libraries. The Macropaedia was _far_ more in depth than the Micropeadia, or WorldBook at its best.
mindslight 3y ago
I've got fond memories of my Funk & Wagnalls Science encyclopedia. It was "my" encyclopedia - it wasn't useful for all school projects, but it was great to just read. As opposed to the school library's encyclopedia that was better for more direct queries, but filled with topics I didn't care enough about to read through linearly. I never associated it with being the budget option, but I don't think my set was comprised of different editions either. Also I think my parents could have afforded a Britannica if they had been turned on to the idea, but they were drawn to buying things incrementally from immediate sales channels. You're spot on about the marketing. I remember them always being prominently at the front of the store. From what I remember the first book was $1 or free with a grocery purchase or something like that, and then of course after reading through that I bugged my Mom to get the next one. (Also I can't help but notice Macaulay's "How Things Work" on the bookshelf in the article. Another hands-down classic that I would definitely push towards kids today even if they don't take to encyclopedias. I believe he's written a follow up book for modern tech, too)
- madcaptenor 3y ago
  I had that one too!
- detourdog 3y ago
  Macaulay taught Illustration at my college when that book was published. Before that book he made one’s on single topic buildings like cathedral and castle.
bigbillheck 3y ago
> The kids' reaction makes perfect sense to me and I grew up with an encyclopedia set in the house. Same, and same, and I don't know why the author ever expected anything else. You can't give them a hoop&stick and then complain when they'd rather play with, I don't know, I'm old and childless, some modern toy.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cxr 3y ago
  > I'm [...] childless So it wouldn't be too presumptuous to treat the chances as being very high that you've never given a child the gift of a very large cardboard box.
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    I never have, but as a child I received a couple, and they're great fun. In this case my thoughts are twofold. First, it sounds like the kids are old enough to be potential users of the encyclopedia, and more importantly old enough to start choosing their own sources, and the way I remember it that's a bit past the age at which a cardboard box holds much excitement. Second, the article has a picture of the box that the encyclopedia came in, and it doesn't really look all that large to me; I've gotten larger ones than that from amazon plenty of times and I would expect the author has as well.
time0ut 3y ago
This takes me back. We had most of a set when I was a kid. I remember many times reading science articles over and over while eating cereal at the kitchen table. I guess not a lot has changed except I read wikipedia (or, let’s be honest, HN) instead. My oldest child is a voracious reader, but she mostly reads fiction/fantasy. I got her a Neil deGrasse Tyson book that she liked. This article reminds me that I need to provide more of that sort of content.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I read all the scientific articles over-and-over and dipped into the other articles over time. Eventually I think I read much more than half of the full set. Not a bad thing. If we'd had smartphones back then I'm not sure I'd learnt anything useful.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
    If one talked about illegal download, z library and pdf drive in the past can provide you unlimited academic books. Sadly both gone. I would not have read about quantum field theory … not that I have no access to u library. But you need to surf those books to find one you can “understand” before you dig in. Even buy one as reading read book is so much better.
ompogUe 3y ago
My mom bought us these, too. But she didn't always go to that supermarket (National, iirc), so we had, say: A-G, K, M-R, and XZY. Or something like that. Still, she was soooo excited when it started that it was infectious.
skydhash 3y ago
I had different encyclopedias at home, most of them targeted to kids. There were two which had specific subjects. One, science and the other, the human body. I believe they would have been more helpful than the internet – I did not have the internet, or even a computer at home at the time – because of the tactile experience. On a computer, everything blends together, and you have to do a more conscious effort to recall a particular fact. Later, I had access to Encarta but, I still preferred reading the physical books. This has shaped my current learning process. I liked to explore a subject instead of getting a direct answer right away. Even when I'm googling, I click on a couple of results first before I'm satisfied. I'm not comfortable with ChatGPT for the same reason.
function_seven 3y ago
I remember this vividly. The end-cap on one of the aisles was where the encyclopedias were stocked. The "A" volume was sold for $0.01. One penny! I remember being incredulous at the low price. My dad: "Wait until you see what they charge for 'B', kiddo."
- floren 3y ago
  Do you remember how much the B volume cost?
  - function_seven 3y ago
    I want to say $39.99, but I'm not entirely sure of that number.
    - smugma 3y ago
      Off by an order of magnitude, <$3.99 each: “Funk & Wagnalls volumes were typically sold in supermarkets as part of a “book-a-week” program. When Mr. Moser came up with the idea of reducing the normal charge to just pennies for the first volume… The entire 27-volume Funk & Wagnalls set — along with the free two-volume dictionary, another sweetener dreamed up by Mr. Moser — cost a little more than $100.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/obituaries/Stanley-Moser-dead-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/obituaries/Stanley-Moser-...
      - function_seven 3y ago
        So this is how I find out how profoundly cheap my dad was :). Thanks.
        Turing_Machine 3y ago
        Well, $3.99 in 1953 (the first year the encyclopedia was offered in supermarkets, ATW) is $45.50 now, according to https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. For 27 volumes, that works out to $1228.50. Your dad wasn't that cheap. :-)
tmastern 3y ago
Good ol Funk and Wagnalls, we had the same set, bought through the same process...they also had a classical music record collection distributed the same way...volume 1 was Beethoven's 6th, which is one of my favorites to this day...
- washadjeffmad 3y ago
  My parents made it all the way up to 'G' before inheriting a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas. I had some well-written reports in grade school that were graded pretty harshly until the teacher figured out what year they were published. I eventually returned to F&W indirectly after we acquired a copy of Encarta on CD-ROM along with our first PC.
detourdog 3y ago
What was the time period for this. Don't remember this at law. I got 14 year old handme down world books from my cousin and the giant Random House Encyclopedia in the 1970s. Growing up there was nothing but time and the ability to read.
jhbadger 3y ago
F&W had a bad reputation (I had a copy as well as a child, for the same reasons, purchased a volume at a time at the grocery store), but it wasn't that bad. Microsoft eventually purchased the rights to it and many of the articles from their 1990s CD-ROM Encyclopedia (Encarta) were either taken directly from F&W or only slightly edited.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > F&W had a bad reputation What was its reputation?
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    That it wasn't a "serious" encyclopedia, probably due to its low cost. Another comment mentioned being allowed to use Encyclopedia Britannica and no other encyclopedia in school because it supposedly was the "most authoritative". It also was the most expensive while F&W was the cheapest (World Book was in between in cost).
jjtheblunt 3y ago
Funk & Wagnalls also had an English dictionary in the early 1970s with excellent etymologies, which seem absent from dictionaries when i've looked in a Barnes and Noble store.
- thanatos519 3y ago
  I had that dictionary. So thorough that I did an entire research project just by reading definitions!
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    I've got it still and it's like 50 years old, and it seems it no longer can be ordered.
- spiffytech 3y ago
  In case anyone hasn't seen it, there's a great online resource for etymologies: https://www.etymonline.com https://www.etymonline.com
- wolverine876 3y ago
  I don't know what Barnes & Noble carries in stores or what dictionaries are printed now. Paper dictionaries have limited space for obvious reasons. The paper dictionary that ignored those restrictions, the Oxford English Dictionary OED, was 20+ volumes. Now most dictionaries are online like encylopedias, again for obvious reasons, and the leading ones at least have etymologies: The OED is the definitive historical dictionary of English, including its etymologies. Unfortunately it's not free, but you might be a member of an institution that subscribes. https://www.oed.com/ https://www.oed.com/ The leading American dictionaries are Merriam-Webster, which has a free edition and a subscription-based unabridged edition (Merriam-Webster now is owned by Britannica, which was American last I knew), and American Heritage, which is free and which has a section on Indo-European and Semitic roots of words. https://www.merriam-webster.com/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/ https://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/ https://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/ https://www.ahdictionary.com/ https://www.ahdictionary.com/ Hope that helps!
bradknowles 3y ago
When I was growing up, I was fortunate that we did have an Encyclopedia in the house. My grandfather was a regional sales manager for Fields Enterprises, and sold World Book Encyclopedias. So, we had a full set. It had all sorts of wonderful things inside, and I remember countless times asking my parents questions after questions and they'd get exasperated with me and tell me to go look it up myself. Six hours later, I would have missed dinner and it would be way past my bed time -- and I would have no concept of how much time had passed. By sixth grade, I was reading at the college level, and my school had no idea what to do with me. By the time I got to college and had a job shelving books in the main library on campus, I found out about Encyclopedia Britannica, which was clearly at least twice as big as World Book, and I found out also much more authoritative. I owe my entire career, and pretty much everything I am to the encyclopedias we had when I was a kid, and my grandfather who made sure we had a set.

by jasode 3y ago

jandrese 3y ago

The limitations of the old style encyclopedia are immediately obvious when you go to actually use it. Thousands of articles that only barely scratch the surface on the topic. Even then if you're interested in something even mildly obscure it won't be in there at all. Of course you couldn't use it as a source when writing a paper, and worst of all they didn't even provide the sourcing information for the articles that they did have (maybe nicer ones did? The ones at my library did not), so as a research tool they were near useless. I do remember that there was an exception for the Encyclopedia Britannica, which could be used as a source as long as it wasn't the only source. For some reason it was considered more scholarly than other encyclopedias.

gumby 3y ago
> The limitations of the old style encyclopedia are immediately obvious when you go to actually use it. Thousands of articles that only barely scratch the surface on the topic. This is a feature not a bug: encyclopedia articles are breadth-first introductions to topics. If you are just mildly curious about something you'll probably get what you need. If you want to know more you'll have a view of the "landscape" and so will probably understand a more specialized book better -- and even be better at finding the right specialized book in the library.
- deepspace 3y ago
  I agree. We had a similar non-mainstream encyclopedia set (not F&W) when I was growing up. I was a voracious reader and, at some point, read them all back to back. That did not provide me with in-depth knowledge about anything, but even today I have a wide general knowledge, and I am interested in many subjects, some very obscure, which I credit to that encyclopedia. More importantly, the encyclopedia gave me an overview of human knowledge and helped me to figure out what I was most interested in. The articles about radio, radar, computers and such always fascinated me and, I think, steered me into a career in engineering.
- heyoni 3y ago
  I wonder if that’s wikipedias intent with their simple initiative. You can pull up articles by adding simple in the domain to get a less comprehensive article.
- njharman 3y ago
  Those features are all much better provided by The Internet. Including finding and ordering a specialized physical book if you need.
wiredfool 3y ago
That's not how you use them. (at least not in my family). It was a read the whole thing deal. So much random knowledge. We had the WorldBooks, but ran across Encyclopedia Britannica in the school libraries. The Macropaedia was _far_ more in depth than the Micropeadia, or WorldBook at its best.

mindslight 3y ago

I've got fond memories of my Funk & Wagnalls Science encyclopedia. It was "my" encyclopedia - it wasn't useful for all school projects, but it was great to just read. As opposed to the school library's encyclopedia that was better for more direct queries, but filled with topics I didn't care enough about to read through linearly. I never associated it with being the budget option, but I don't think my set was comprised of different editions either. Also I think my parents could have afforded a Britannica if they had been turned on to the idea, but they were drawn to buying things incrementally from immediate sales channels. You're spot on about the marketing. I remember them always being prominently at the front of the store. From what I remember the first book was $1 or free with a grocery purchase or something like that, and then of course after reading through that I bugged my Mom to get the next one. (Also I can't help but notice Macaulay's "How Things Work" on the bookshelf in the article. Another hands-down classic that I would definitely push towards kids today even if they don't take to encyclopedias. I believe he's written a follow up book for modern tech, too)

madcaptenor 3y ago
I had that one too!
detourdog 3y ago
Macaulay taught Illustration at my college when that book was published. Before that book he made one’s on single topic buildings like cathedral and castle.

bigbillheck 3y ago

> The kids' reaction makes perfect sense to me and I grew up with an encyclopedia set in the house. Same, and same, and I don't know why the author ever expected anything else. You can't give them a hoop&stick and then complain when they'd rather play with, I don't know, I'm old and childless, some modern toy.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cxr 3y ago
> I'm [...] childless So it wouldn't be too presumptuous to treat the chances as being very high that you've never given a child the gift of a very large cardboard box.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  I never have, but as a child I received a couple, and they're great fun. In this case my thoughts are twofold. First, it sounds like the kids are old enough to be potential users of the encyclopedia, and more importantly old enough to start choosing their own sources, and the way I remember it that's a bit past the age at which a cardboard box holds much excitement. Second, the article has a picture of the box that the encyclopedia came in, and it doesn't really look all that large to me; I've gotten larger ones than that from amazon plenty of times and I would expect the author has as well.

time0ut 3y ago

This takes me back. We had most of a set when I was a kid. I remember many times reading science articles over and over while eating cereal at the kitchen table. I guess not a lot has changed except I read wikipedia (or, let’s be honest, HN) instead. My oldest child is a voracious reader, but she mostly reads fiction/fantasy. I got her a Neil deGrasse Tyson book that she liked. This article reminds me that I need to provide more of that sort of content.

actionfromafar 3y ago
I read all the scientific articles over-and-over and dipped into the other articles over time. Eventually I think I read much more than half of the full set. Not a bad thing. If we'd had smartphones back then I'm not sure I'd learnt anything useful.
- ngcc_hk 3y ago
  If one talked about illegal download, z library and pdf drive in the past can provide you unlimited academic books. Sadly both gone. I would not have read about quantum field theory … not that I have no access to u library. But you need to surf those books to find one you can “understand” before you dig in. Even buy one as reading read book is so much better.

ompogUe 3y ago

My mom bought us these, too. But she didn't always go to that supermarket (National, iirc), so we had, say: A-G, K, M-R, and XZY. Or something like that. Still, she was soooo excited when it started that it was infectious.

skydhash 3y ago

I had different encyclopedias at home, most of them targeted to kids. There were two which had specific subjects. One, science and the other, the human body. I believe they would have been more helpful than the internet – I did not have the internet, or even a computer at home at the time – because of the tactile experience. On a computer, everything blends together, and you have to do a more conscious effort to recall a particular fact. Later, I had access to Encarta but, I still preferred reading the physical books. This has shaped my current learning process. I liked to explore a subject instead of getting a direct answer right away. Even when I'm googling, I click on a couple of results first before I'm satisfied. I'm not comfortable with ChatGPT for the same reason.

function_seven 3y ago

I remember this vividly. The end-cap on one of the aisles was where the encyclopedias were stocked. The "A" volume was sold for $0.01. One penny! I remember being incredulous at the low price. My dad: "Wait until you see what they charge for 'B', kiddo."

floren 3y ago
Do you remember how much the B volume cost?
- function_seven 3y ago
  I want to say $39.99, but I'm not entirely sure of that number.
  - smugma 3y ago
    Off by an order of magnitude, <$3.99 each: “Funk & Wagnalls volumes were typically sold in supermarkets as part of a “book-a-week” program. When Mr. Moser came up with the idea of reducing the normal charge to just pennies for the first volume… The entire 27-volume Funk & Wagnalls set — along with the free two-volume dictionary, another sweetener dreamed up by Mr. Moser — cost a little more than $100.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/obituaries/Stanley-Moser-dead-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/obituaries/Stanley-Moser-...
    - function_seven 3y ago
      So this is how I find out how profoundly cheap my dad was :). Thanks.
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        Well, $3.99 in 1953 (the first year the encyclopedia was offered in supermarkets, ATW) is $45.50 now, according to https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. For 27 volumes, that works out to $1228.50. Your dad wasn't that cheap. :-)

tmastern 3y ago

Good ol Funk and Wagnalls, we had the same set, bought through the same process...they also had a classical music record collection distributed the same way...volume 1 was Beethoven's 6th, which is one of my favorites to this day...

washadjeffmad 3y ago
My parents made it all the way up to 'G' before inheriting a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas. I had some well-written reports in grade school that were graded pretty harshly until the teacher figured out what year they were published. I eventually returned to F&W indirectly after we acquired a copy of Encarta on CD-ROM along with our first PC.

detourdog 3y ago

What was the time period for this. Don't remember this at law. I got 14 year old handme down world books from my cousin and the giant Random House Encyclopedia in the 1970s. Growing up there was nothing but time and the ability to read.

jhbadger 3y ago

F&W had a bad reputation (I had a copy as well as a child, for the same reasons, purchased a volume at a time at the grocery store), but it wasn't that bad. Microsoft eventually purchased the rights to it and many of the articles from their 1990s CD-ROM Encyclopedia (Encarta) were either taken directly from F&W or only slightly edited.

wolverine876 3y ago
> F&W had a bad reputation What was its reputation?
- jhbadger 3y ago
  That it wasn't a "serious" encyclopedia, probably due to its low cost. Another comment mentioned being allowed to use Encyclopedia Britannica and no other encyclopedia in school because it supposedly was the "most authoritative". It also was the most expensive while F&W was the cheapest (World Book was in between in cost).

jjtheblunt 3y ago

Funk & Wagnalls also had an English dictionary in the early 1970s with excellent etymologies, which seem absent from dictionaries when i've looked in a Barnes and Noble store.

thanatos519 3y ago
I had that dictionary. So thorough that I did an entire research project just by reading definitions!
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  I've got it still and it's like 50 years old, and it seems it no longer can be ordered.
spiffytech 3y ago
In case anyone hasn't seen it, there's a great online resource for etymologies: https://www.etymonline.com https://www.etymonline.com
wolverine876 3y ago
I don't know what Barnes & Noble carries in stores or what dictionaries are printed now. Paper dictionaries have limited space for obvious reasons. The paper dictionary that ignored those restrictions, the Oxford English Dictionary OED, was 20+ volumes. Now most dictionaries are online like encylopedias, again for obvious reasons, and the leading ones at least have etymologies: The OED is the definitive historical dictionary of English, including its etymologies. Unfortunately it's not free, but you might be a member of an institution that subscribes. https://www.oed.com/ https://www.oed.com/ The leading American dictionaries are Merriam-Webster, which has a free edition and a subscription-based unabridged edition (Merriam-Webster now is owned by Britannica, which was American last I knew), and American Heritage, which is free and which has a section on Indo-European and Semitic roots of words. https://www.merriam-webster.com/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/ https://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/ https://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/ https://www.ahdictionary.com/ https://www.ahdictionary.com/ Hope that helps!

bradknowles 3y ago

When I was growing up, I was fortunate that we did have an Encyclopedia in the house. My grandfather was a regional sales manager for Fields Enterprises, and sold World Book Encyclopedias. So, we had a full set. It had all sorts of wonderful things inside, and I remember countless times asking my parents questions after questions and they'd get exasperated with me and tell me to go look it up myself. Six hours later, I would have missed dinner and it would be way past my bed time -- and I would have no concept of how much time had passed. By sixth grade, I was reading at the college level, and my school had no idea what to do with me. By the time I got to college and had a job shelving books in the main library on campus, I found out about Encyclopedia Britannica, which was clearly at least twice as big as World Book, and I found out also much more authoritative. I owe my entire career, and pretty much everything I am to the encyclopedias we had when I was a kid, and my grandfather who made sure we had a set.