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In Ancient Rome, Marcus Terentius Varro wrote his Nine Books of Disciples, which are often attributed to being the basis of all modern encyclopedias. -
"Cyclopædia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" was written in 1728 by Ephraim Chambers. It was the first ever paper encyclopedia, and covered a wide range of topics from trigonometry to philosophy. -
In 1768, Encyclopedia Britannica, otherwise known as "A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon a New Plan", was published by its founders Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell. -
In 1913, The Everyman's Encyclopedia was introduced. It was designed to be a more affordable version of other popular encyclopedias at the time that was designed to appeal to a larger audience. This made encyclopedias much more widespread globally as more people were able to afford them. -
The first ever digital encyclopedia was created in 1985. It was a CD-ROM of the Academic American Encyclopedia and was published by Grolier Publishing Company. Later on in 1993 Microsoft would produce its own CD-ROM encyclopedia with Encarta. -
In 1993, Rick Gates came up with the idea of Interpedia, an online encyclopedia similar to that of modern-day Wikipedia on the PACS-L forum. The project was discussed for about a year but never left planning stages.
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In 2001, the English Wikipedia was first launched. Since then, wikipedia has expanded to encompass more languages. -
in 2006, Conservapedia, an alt-right fundamentalist christian version of wikipedia, was launched. The site has been known to push various conspiracy theories and being riddled with logical fallacies and incomplete information.