Compton's Encyclopedia and Fact-Index is the title of an encyclopedia published in Chicago, Illinois since the 1920s. The company was founded by Chandler B. Beach and in 1907 continued by F. E. Compton. In 1961 it was acquired by the Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. and in 1992, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. published a CD-ROM edition of Compton's Encyclopedia. In the creation of Encyclopædia Britannica Online (1994), the company was able to build on experience from the aforementioned multimedia edition of Compton's Encyclopedia. From the 1990s to 2001, Compton's Encyclopedia was a product of The Learning Company, and since 2001, a part of Riverdeep. Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, 1902 An encylopedia, encyclopaedia or (traditionally) encyclopædia,[1] is a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. ... Nickname: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi Town, City of the Big Shoulders, The 312, The City that Works Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in Chicagoland and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois County Cook & DuPage Incorporated March 4, 1837  - Mayor... The 1920s is a decade sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ... 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Frank Elbert Compton, born 1874, died 1950, publisher of encyclopedias and other reference works, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. See also Chandler B. Beach, editor of the (New) Students Reference Work, published by F. E. Compton & Co. ... Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... This article is very long Some browsers may have difficulty rendering this article. ... 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Learning Company (TLC) is an American educational software company, founded in 1980. ... Riverdeep Interactive Learning is a publishing house for educational online and CDROM products based in San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland, founded in 1995. ...

Titles, editions and sizes

• Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 8 volumes, 1922
  • 10 volumes, 1924, 1926, 1929
  • 16 volumes, 1931
  • 15 volumes, 1948
• 1937, 1938, 1940, 1945, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1962
• Compton's Encyclopedia and Fact-Index, 24 volumes 1969-1971
  • 22 volumes, 1972, 1973
  • 26 volumes, annually 1974-1978 and 1980-1995, 2004
• Compton's Family Encyclopedia, CDROM, 1990, 1991. See the inspiring article on it in 1990 Mar 19 Newsweek, p. 45.
• Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia, CDROM, 1992
• Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, CDROM, annually 1995-1998

CD-ROM editions

An electronic version of Compton's Encyclopedia has been available on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM since 1992. Encyclopædia Britannica in its Encyclopædia Britannica Online has incorporated Compton's Interactive encyclopedia into its database. DVD is an optical disc storage media format that is used for playback of movies with high video and sound quality and for storing data. ...

The CD itself was praised for its hundreds of multimedia elements, even in its earliest editions, including images, sounds, and video. It was also celebrated for the diversity of the topics its many thousands of articles covered.

The 1995 edition included creatively-named sections such as the "newsroom" for searching recent events or the "playroom" for children-oriented articles. Articles could still be searched for via the "idea search", which looked up the entered keyword in the whole article, or searching in the "contents", which attempted to match the entered text with the title of an article.

While innovative, Compton's was not the first multimedia encyclopedia. Grolier had published Academic American Encyclopedia on CD-ROM in 1985. This article or section needs to be wikified. ...

A version of the CD-ROM edition was also released for the Sega CD video game system. The Sega Mega-CD (Japanese: メガCD) is an add-on device for the Sega Mega Drive released in Europe, Australia, and Japan. ...

See also

• List of encyclopedias