Pre-Wikipedia. Pre-Google. Pre-Internet even. In the late '80s and early '90s, if someone wanted to search for information on a specific topic with their computer, they needed the help of a multimedia encyclopedia. Microsoft Encarta topped the list, but it wasn't alone in the market, and it had some very interesting rivals, some also developed by Redmond. How about a review...?
If there was a custom among most computer users in the mid-'90s, it was having a case full of CDs with different copies of Microsoft Encarta. And I say 'copies' because Microsoft wanted an average of 100 dollars per license or update, a sum that many could not invest, or that they simply decided to put into hardware upgrades for better performance. Multimedia encyclopedias were an essential part of the identity of the computing world at that time, and they remained so for almost two decades until the extraordinary advancement of the Web and the explosion of free services like Wikipedia turned them into digital fossils. Why don't we explore their history a little?
Compton's Encyclopedia
From a technical standpoint, the Grolier encyclopedia was the first to be released in CD-ROM format, but it was not multimedia; it was text-based. The title of "first multimedia encyclopedia" belongs to Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia, a publication under the wing of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" that saw the light in 1989. Over time it became better known as Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, and it was available in alternative formats, including Sega-CD and Philips CD-i. The 1995 version stands out for having none other than Patrick Stewart as host.
Microsoft Encarta
Yes, it would be a real aberration not to give Encarta its own paragraph. Although it was not the first title in the Microsoft Home family, it quickly became its flagship project. The original editions of Encarta used content from the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, which Microsoft acquired under a non-exclusive license. Truth be told, Funk & Wagnalls was not Redmond's first choice, and they only accepted it after failing to secure rights to the Encyclopædia Britannica and the World Book Encyclopedia. Encarta debuted in 1993 with a $395 price tag, part of Bill Gates's vision that boiled down to "high price, high demand", which initially turned out to be catastrophic. Only after dropping to $99 did Encarta conquer the market, accumulating more than a million copies sold in 1994. The encyclopedia reached the Web in 2000, in a reduced free edition. Finally, evolution knocked on the door. Unable to compete with the speed of Google and Wikipedia (even while delivering good-quality updates and solid reception in international markets), the Encarta project threw in the towel in mid-2009, shutting down all its online services that same year.
Cómo Funcionan Las Cosas
To learn the origin of "Cómo Funcionan Las Cosas" we must travel back to 1988, the year the book was published under its original English title 'The Way Things Work', by David Macaulay and Neil Ardley. Its multimedia edition was released in 1994 by Dorling Kindersley for Windows 3.1, and like its paper sister, it was known for the extraordinary quality of its illustrations (led by the adorable mammoth), and for animating basically every aspect of its interface and content. Without a doubt, the interactive component of Cómo Funcionan Las Cosas was a step above the rest, and its enormous popularity gave rise to later, even more complete and polished versions, with material that didn't necessarily target the little ones at home. Setting aside copyright details, if you want a copy you can download the ISO image from the Internet Archive, although most likely you'll need to set up a virtual environment with the appropriate operating system.
Microsoft Dangerous Animals
From a certain point of view, you can't blame Microsoft for trying to make lightning strike twice in the same place, and a year after Encarta hit the shelves, Dangerous Animals appeared. This specialized encyclopedia was divided into an atlas for locating animals by region, habitat, the type of 'weapons' at their disposal, guides, and an alphabetical index. The visual material came from sources like the BBC, National Geographic, and the aforementioned Dorling Kindersley. With an original price of $60, Dangerous Animals had a much more relevant fate as part of the "Microsoft Home Bundle", which included Encarta, Microsoft Money, Works Multimedia, and more. Does this bring back good memories? If the answer is yes, the Internet Archive comes to the rescue once again.
Microsoft Cinemania
If you need precise information about a TV series, a movie, or the actors who appeared in it, the first step for any enthusiast is to visit the IMDB portal (which was born inside the old Usenet system before the '90s), but in 1992, Microsoft began offering an alternative called Cinemania. This database came to include tens of thousands of professional reviews from figures like Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and the controversial Pauline Kael, backed by more than 2,000 images, script excerpts, soundtracks, and of course, video. Microsoft Cinemania was one of the first to suffer the limitations of the CD-ROM format, since with each edition the amount of data grew, but not the number of discs. The last available version was Cinemania 97, which despite its monthly updates, could do nothing against the firepower of IMDB.
Enciclopedia Universal Micronet
And to close our tour, we'll stop at a Spanish project that dates back to 1995. The Enciclopedia Universal Micronet has accumulated more than 185,000 articles in its latest edition (the 23rd, from 2012), with an average of 53,000 biographies, 15,000 images, 1,700 audio samples (ranging from classical music to animal sounds and historical political figures), and 400 videos. The official page also presents the Enciclopedia Escolar Micronet, a version more focused on the needs of primary and secondary education, with 10,000 multimedia elements, an integrated dictionary, and several question-and-answer tests. Even if we combine the material from both editions, Micronet pales in comparison to the one and a half million articles that Spanish Wikipedia has.
And that's all for now. Do you remember any other multimedia encyclopedia that deserves to be on the list? Do you still depend on these offline editions to study and work? Leave a comment!
