The Random House Encyclopedia

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The Random House Encyclopedia
The Random House Encyclopedia - book cover.jpg
Cover of third edition
AuthorVarious experts of different subjects. Editor in chief James Mitchell and editorial director Jess Stein.
Cover artistPeter Bradford and Orville Ottey
LanguageEnglish
Genre Encyclopaedia
Published1977 (first edition), 1983 (second edition), 1990 (third edition) [1]
Publication placeUnited States
Pages2912 (third edition) [1]
ISBN 0-39458450-3

The Random House Encyclopedia is an English language one-volume general encyclopaedia published by Random House. [2] [3] The first edition was published in 1977, [4] [5] followed by a second edition in 1983 and a third edition in 1990. [1] [3] The encyclopaedia is divided into two sections: Colorpedia, which is made of lengthy, illustrated articles, and Alphapedia, which features short, alphabetically arranged ones. [2] [3] The third edition comprised over 25,000 articles, including 13,500 illustrations and maps, with over 45,000 cross-references. [1]

The 25,000 articles of the Alphapedia of the third edition were the basis for an electronic version. [6] [7] It was made for the MS-DOS 3.3 operating system and was distributed on sixteen 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disks and also on eight 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks. The Random House Encyclopedia also served as the basis for different editions in over 20 countries, including the ten-volume Joy of Knowledge encyclopedia published in Great Britain. [1]

Contents

  1. The Universe 32
  2. The Earth 160
  3. Life on Earth 400
  4. Man 640
  5. History and Culture 944
  6. Man and Science 1432
  7. Man and Machines 1576
  8. Time Chart: Text 1825

New works of reference
In the future, printed reference books will undoubtedly be supplemented by more technologically advanced ways of storing and retrieving information. Computer data banks can hold an enormous amount of information in a way that enables it to be available instantly and readily updated.

[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Kister, Kenneth F. (1994). Kister's best encyclopedias: a comparative guide to general and specialized encyclopedias (2nd ed.). Phoenix, Arizona: Oryx Press. pp. 146–153. ISBN   0-89774-744-5.
  2. 1 2 "encyclopaedia". Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Vol. Editing and publishing: The length of encyclopaedias and encyclopaedic articles. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2015. ISBN   978-1625132963.
  3. 1 2 3 "Encyclopedia". Encarta Multimedia Encyclopedia. Vol. V. North American encyclopedias. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. 2009.
  4. ↑ Kobasa, Paul A. (2013). "Encyclopedia". The World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia. Vol. Encyclopedias of the 1800s and 1900s. Chicago: World Book, Inc. ISBN   9780716683322.
  5. ↑ "Encyclopedia, after 10 years, is due Sept. 30". New York Times. 23 August 1977. p. 32. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  6. ↑ "The Random House encyclopedia [computer file]". Library of Congress. Retrieved 15 July 2016. Published/Created Pittsford, NY : Microlytics, c 1990.
  7. ↑ "The Random House Encyclopedia for Windows". PC Magazine. Vol. 12, no. 10. Ziff Davis, Inc. 25 May 1993. pp. 193–194. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  8. ↑ "Reference Books". The Random House Encyclopedia. Vol. Man and Machines. New York: Random House. 1990. pp.  1780. ISBN   0-39458450-3.
  9. 1 2 "Contents". The Random House Encyclopedia (3rd ed.). New York: Random House. 1990. pp.  5. ISBN   0-39458450-3.
  10. ↑ "Reference Books". The Random House Encyclopedia. Vol. Man and Machines. New York: Random House. 1990. pp.  1781. ISBN   0-39458450-3.


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