Robert Hutchins, University of Chicago President
Benton had been recruited to the University of Chicago in 1937 by his fellow student in the Yale College Class of 1924, then Chicago’s president, Robert Maynard Hutchins. Hutchins was one of the 20th century’s most prominent intellects and [...]
William Benton, EB Owner and Publisher
Paralleling this whole development of the computer, encyclopedists at Encyclopaedia Britannica had been thinking long and hard about the proper structure of a modern encyclopedia and how it might be conjoined with an appropriate human/machine interface adapted to the [...]
The Encyclopedist’s Art
In the twentieth century, encyclopedists were not the only people to worry about how to facilitate access to an ever-growing sum of knowledge. The problem arising from the information explosion of modern times was also noticed by those who [...]
A Milestone in Evolution of the Human/Machine Interface
Who would have guessed that at the end of the 20th century it would be a company founded in Scotland in 1768 that would invent a key part of the mechanics that would let people intuitively navigate the electronic [...]
The Encyclopædia Britannica First Edition
The three-volume First Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica paid homage to its classical roots in two conspicuous ways. One was a departure from the conventional spelling of encyclopedia. The use of the æ ligature preserved an ancient bequest of [...]
The Proper Study of Mankind
Although a print publisher throughout its long life, Encyclopaedia Britannica had been keeping abreast of computer developments closely. When the first CD-ROM (for Compact Disc-Read Only Memory) storage discs came out in 1985, Britannica had just put the finishing [...]
UPI’s Bankruptcy Unfolds with a Shock
It has never sounded quite right when I tell people that as a result of my legal advice, UPI declared bankruptcy. But that’s what shortly happened. Kenny and other UPI senior executives followed Nogales’s abrupt departure and resigned. As [...]
The Los Angeles Blow Up
For some time, it had been the view of Nogales and Kenny that the time had come for Ruhe and Geissler to either sell UPI or send it into bankruptcy court for a restructuring. Now Nogales was making the [...]
Ruhe and Geissler Lose Sway as UPI Implodes
As summer 1984 wore on, another Baha’i friend of Ruhe continued to chase payment for enormous consulting fees for an automated accounting system he promised UPI but never delivered. When I joined Kenny and Self urging Ruhe to further [...]
