Wiki Galore: How knowledgeable Scots were the brains behind world-famous compendium’s groundbreaking first edition 250 years ago

With countless volumes, editions and specialist subjects, encyclopedias brought the world’s knowledge together in one place for the first time – and, like many of the inventions and discoveries detailed in their pages, the modern A-Z compendium was the brainchild of Scots.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, perhaps the best-known general knowledge English-language encyclopedia, was first published in Edinburgh in 1768, the masterpiece of engraver Andrew Bell, printer Colin Macfarquhar, and principal editor William Smellie.

In the 1750s, writes Simon Garfield, knowledge, or at least the accumulation of information, was seen as a marketable commodity, as saleable as cotton and tin, and the business partners saw “the collation and summation of the world’s practical thinking into a few manageable volumes” as a good way to make money.

Collectively known as “A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland”, more than 100 experts and authors contributed to the first edition,

which was issued in parts from December 1768 to 1771 and printed at Macfarquhar’s office on Nicolson Street. Each 24-page instalment cost 6d on ordinary paper and 8d on more refined stock, with the first complete leather-bound set costing £2 and 10 shillings on plain paper, £3 and 7 shillings on finer. “Scotland is celebrated for many things, but I’m not sure being the home of and the inspiration of the multi-volume encyclopedia is ever considered,” explained Garfield. “It’s nice to remind people kind of that.

“Britannica relied on experts, who wanted to show what they knew to themselves and to the rest of the world – and, with the Scottish Enlightenment, there were so many experts in philosophy and surgery, science and technology, in Edinburgh.

“The experts were from Scotland, but there wasn’t a particularly Scottish bent in terms of the content. The whole idea was to get information on everything in, from all over. But Edinburgh University was clearly the place where most of the experts were drawn from – they were either working in the field or in the industry or the University.

“Scotland had a very vibrant printing industry and a great entrepreneurial spirit as well, so all those elements combined.”