Author Bran

The Student's Cyclopædia (1900)

Bran

General Details

Title: The Student's Cyclopædia
Volumes: 2
Language: English
Publisher: H. M. Dixon & Co.
Year: 1900
Pages: 1,503

The Student's Cyclopædia: A Ready Reference Library for School and Home Embracing History, Biography, Geography, Discovery, Invention, Arts, Sciences, Literature was published in 1900 in St. Louis (the location of publication may have played a small role in my decision to purchase this work). The goal of this encyclopedia is to be compact and written in a language a twelve year old could understand: "many parents have bought some one of the large cyclopædias, only to find that it was written for mature and educated minds, and is entirely beyond the understanding of the young. [...] While childish language has been avoided, care has been taken to admit no words or forms of expression which will not be understood by intelligent boys and girls of twelve years of age. Only such features of scientific subjects are presented as can be expressed in popular terms" (iii). One bit of the preface that made me chuckle was the admission on the part of the editor to using other encyclopedias to write this one: "Free use has been made of many works, and especially of the larger cyclopædias, as: American Cyclopædia, Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia, The Encyclopædia Britannica and the new edition of Chambers Encyclopædia" (iv).

The entries are fairly short and some are written in a fairly entertaining manner. I imagine the style would anger straight-fact-loving Mr. Greeley from Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia, but I bet most twelve-year-olds (and adults) would prefer reading from this sometimes dramatic and opinionated work. An entry on the ancient city "Abydos," for example, contains this snippet about Xerxes: "When his bridge of boats nearly a mile in length, was swept away by a storm, he punished the sea by inflicting three hundred lashes and casting chains into his waves" (volume 1, page 3). The article on "Samuel Johnson" describes his dealings with Lord Chesterfield in this manner: "From 1747 to 1755 he was working away on his famous Dictionary. Just when the huge undertaking was nearly done, a nobleman whose help at an earlier time had been refused Johnson, wished to patronize the writer and his work. To this, Johnson replied in the famous letter of Feb. 7, 1755, which is perhaps the finest piece of indignant writing on record" (volume 1, page 601).

There are small illustrations scattered throughout, as well as a few full-page plates, all in black and white. There are no maps. This is a small encyclopedia and text occupies the vast majority of it. At the end of the second volume is a thorough index.

Sample Entries

I attempt to look up "umbrella" and "Saint Louis" in each of the reference works I feature on this site in order to provide an fair comparison between them. There is no entry on "umbrella" or "parasol" in this encyclopedia. The entry on "Saint Louis" is in volume 2 and occupies pages 1133 and 1134.

St. Louis (sent lou'is), the chief city of the Mississippi valley, and the fifth of the United States, is in Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi river, 21 miles south of the mouth of the Missouri. The city stands many feet above the river, built on three terraces, the third terrace being 200 feet high. It has a river frontage of 19 miles, and covers 62½ square miles. Water is taken from the Mississippi river, the water works having a capacity of 50,000,000 gallons daily, which will soon be doubled. Only electric lighting is used; and there are cable, electric and horse railroads. Eighteen railroads enter the new union depot, and an electric railroad is being built between St. Louis and Chicago. The Eads bridge over the Mississippi was opened in 1874, and is 1,524 feet long. The Merchants' steel bridge, opened in 1890, is 2,450 feet long, including approaches.

Among the fine public buildings are the new city hall, costing over $1,500,000, the exposition building, four courts, the merchants' exchange, court house, Union Trust building, Equitable building, Southern and Planters' hotel, the United States arsenal, Roman Catholic cathedral and St. George's church (Episcopalian). The public squares and parks occupy over 2,000 acres. Forest park is the largest, containing 1,372 acres; Tower Grove park, in which is a botanical garden, is one of the finest in the country. The exposition is open every fall, and is one of the best yearly fairs in the United States.

St. Louis spends over $1,000,000 a year on its public schools, which are attended by 162,878 pupils. St. Louis University has 34 professors and 435 students; its buildings are new, and it has a library of 25,000 volumes. Washington University includes a college, polytechnic school, law school, school of botany and school of fine arts; it has 104 professors, and 1,450 students. The museum of fine arts is housed in a handsome building. The chief libraries are the public school library (75,000 volumes), and the mercantile library (68,000 volumes).

St. Louis's growth is due to its river trade, though now it is equally important as a railroad center. It receives over 10,000,000 tons of freight yearly and ships over 6,000,000 tons. It manufactures more tobacco than any city in the world; its other chief manufactures are beer, and boots and shoes.

In 1764 a company of merchants headed by Pierre Ligueste Lacléde, who had been given by the director-general of Louisiana the right to trade with the Indians on the Missouri, made a settlement at St. Louis. It was taken possession of by Spanish troops in 1768 and with the rest of Louisiana became a part of the United States in 1803. In 1780 it was attacked by a large body of Indians, who were driven off. For many years it was only a trading post for the fur traders. The first newspaper was started in 1808; and a year later it became a town. The city suffered from cholera in 1832, and from cholera and fire in 1849. Population, 451,770. See Billon's Annals of St. Louis in Its Early Days.

Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia (1939)

Bran

General Details

Title: Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia
Volumes: 15
Language: English
Publisher: F. E. Compton & Company
Year: 1939
Pages: 5,340

The Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact-Index claims on each title page to "inspire ambition, to stimulate the imagination, to provide the inquiring mind with accurate information told in an interesting style, and thus lead into broad fields of knowledge — such is the purpose of this work". It was first published in 1922; I have the 1939 edition. It lives up to its "pictured" description, being filled with photographs, graphs, and maps. There are some color plates, as well as a few pages of tinted illustrations and photographs, but most of the work is monochrome. At the beginning of each volume is a "Here and There in This Volume" section providing a table of contents to some of the longer articles (and occasional story) for the person looking for "something interesting to read." There is also a list of "Interest-Questions Answered in This Volume" following the table of contents. For example, in volume 9 ("M"), one of the questions is "What poet ruined his eyesight writing political pamphlets? 178". Turning to the given page, we discover that the answer is John Milton: "Physicians warned him that he must stop work or lose his sight. His reply was that, as he had already sacrificed his poetry, so he was now ready to sacrifice his eyes on the altar of English liberty. Complete blindness came in 1652. Worse even than blindness was the shattering of all his ideals and hopes with the downfall of the Commonwealth" (178).

The 1939 edition of Compton's is special for being one of the first publications to feature "pictographs" (isotypes, invented by Otto Neurath). It's strange now to think of charts and graphs using images to represent data as being a novel invention, but at the time it was. Compton released special advertising material to promote the "greatest step in visual education since [the] invention of photography" - I've reproduced the full text of the pamphlet (image to the right) here:

specially prepared for Compton articles by the INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL EDUCATION under the direction of Dr. Otto Neurath of The Hague, world-famous social scientist and educator

Here, at last, is a scientific "picture language" that visualizes the essential ideas of the modern social studies!

The Compton pictographs — created by Dr. Neurath and his great organization at The Hague — are the result of 20 years of study and experiment with "eye learning."

They have an almost magic influence. They bring abstract principles to life. They give young students a clear grasp of social relationships, often difficult to explain by older methods.

They stimulate attention, interest, imagination, and understanding. They leave with the student a permanent "visual memory" of what he has learned. They train him to new and clearer ways of thinking for himself.

Experts on the needs of American students worked with Dr. Neurath in preparing each of the 43 pictographs. The six shown here give only a suggestion of the wealth of material covered.

COMPTON LEADERSHIP IN VISUAL EDUCATION ONCE MORE TAKES A GREAT FORWARD STRIDE!

Another unique feature of this encyclopedia is that the index is split among all of the volumes; each volume has a tabbed index in the back for the letters in that volume. "The Easy Reference Fact-Index" is like a mini-encyclopedia itself, providing short definitions for a number of topics that don't have main entries of their own, as well as linking to pertinent entries when available. There are also a number of special lists and tables scattered throughout the indices. This arrangement is particular to Compton's; at the bottom of the title page for each index is listed The plan, arrangement, and contents of this index are original with F. E. Compton & Company and are fully protected by United States, Imperial, and International copyright, and registered trade mark no. 336,781".

Similar to a number of reference works, Compton's wants readers to be sure to consult the index first when looking up particular topics for research - an "Editor's Note" prefaces the index in each volume: "Every user of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia should form the habit of first turning to the Fact-Index section at the end of each volume when in search of specific information. This index is a miniature work of reference in itself and will often give you directly the facts, dates, or definitions you seek. Even when you want a full treatment of a subject, you will usually save time by getting the exact page numbers of your material from the index". Some of the longer entries in the encyclopedia proper have a mini Index ("Reference-Outline for Organized Study of" X) directing the reader to various related topics arranged in a hierarchical structure.

Sample Entries

I attempt to look up "umbrella" and "Saint Louis" in each reference work featured on this site in order to allow fair comparison between each of them. If we follow editorial instructions, we should start in the appropriate index for each. "Umbrella" exists in the Fact-Index in volume 14 on pages 369-370, but does not have an entry proper:

Umbrella, a folding, portable protector from sun or rain made of silk, cotton, paper, etc.; in ancient times used by royalty in Eastern countries; became popular in England in the 18th century.

The index entry for "Saint Louis" is found on page 368 in volume 13.

St. Louis, Mo., largest city of state and chief market for central Mississippi Valley; near junction of Mississippi and Missouri rivers; pop. 821,960: S-9-10, maps M-208, U-188-9, picture M-206
art museum S-10 See also in Index Museums, table
early river trade M-206
Federal Reserve Bank (8th), map F-22
fur trade S-9: auctions S-70; beginnings of F-226
German element I-22
great fire F-58
Louisiana Purchase Exposition S-9-10
Mound City M-291
natural gas supplied G-24
zoölogical park, picture Z-225

The main entry for "Saint Louis" is found in volume 13 on pages 9 and 10:

Saint Louis, Mo. Situated a few miles below the junction of the Mississippi with the mighty Missouri, St. Louis spreads over 20 miles of the curving west bank of the Mississippi and extends back nearly ten miles from its once busy levee on the river front. St. Louis is a great city, a very great city, in wealth, industry, and resources. The chief receiving point for the vast and rich territory to the southwest, and the chief market for the central area of the rich Mississippi valley, it has long held its position as one of the leading cities of the United States. It is today a metropolitan center with a population of 821,960. The tributary district of East St. Louis, just across the river in Illinois, and the suburbs which its old charter prevents it from annexing, add about 450,000 more.

Its commanding position and splendid transportation facilities make it the center of industries as varies as they are important. As a distributing center it claims to be the country's largest market for shoes, hardware, stoves and furnaces, horses and mules, carpets, drugs, hides, harness, and various other products. When the Great War closed the fur markets of England and Germany, St. Louis, which had been an important fur center, sprang into place as the largest raw fur market in the world, receiving furs from every state in the Union, from every province in Canada, and from Alaska.

Shoes for a Nation

St. Louis has also greatly diversified manufactures. Its annual output of shoes is sufficient to provide every fourth person in the United States with a pair. It is one of the greatest lumber markets of the world, and there are immense woodenware and furniture factories. The decreasing production of ore in Missouri caused a decline of the once important pig-iron industry, but St. Louis developed her manufactures of finished iron and steel goods, and now turns out quantities of structural iron, castings, machine-shop and foundry products, boilers, stoves, wire goods, cutlery, tools, and agricultural implements. Missouri is a great producer of lead and zinc, so the manufactures of lead and zinc products, plumbers' and steamfitters' supplies, paint and white lead have become distinctive St. Louis industries. Other important products are railroad cars, street cars, automobiles, electrical supplies, enameled ware, drugs, paints, soap, clothing, meats, flour, and other food products.

The river and the railroads in turn have given St. Louis her commercial importance. When the Mississippi River was the great highway of traffic, St. Louis had its first great period of growth. With the cessation of the river traffic, St. Louis marked time for awhile, then caught the swifter cadence of the railroad. With the revival of river transportation in the last few years, the city has resumed its position as a great port. Fleets of steel barges carry its manufactures to New Orleans for shipment to the Southwest, the Pacific Coast, and foreign countries; and they bring back cargoes of coffee, sugar, sisal, canned goods, and other heavy freight. Modern municipal and government docks have been built.

Several great bridges span the mighty Mississippi and connect the city with Illinois. The newest of these, the Municipal Free Bridge, is the largest double-decked bridge in existence. Eads Bridge, completed in 1874, was the first bridge to span the lordly Mississippi; it carries both wagon ways and railroad tracks, and is 55 feet above high water so as not to interfere with river traffic. Built entirely of steel above its piers, its long spans arching high over the swiftly flowing water, it gives an appearance at once of graceful beauty and invincible strength. There are also passenger and freight ferries.

The St. Louis of History

St. Louis originally consisted of three streets back from the river. This old section later became the business district, and now for the most part is given over to commission merchants and great silent warehouses. Here and there a façade of rare distinction or a glimpse through cobwebbed windows of a wonderful stair, and the very sturdy and substantial old cathedral of gray granite, with its exotic French inscriptions, speak of this section's former glory. The old court house is near by, interesting as a dignified structure, and as the scene of the whipping post and of the slave sales held in former days on its steps. The old French market and the municipal markets are also places of interest.

St. Louis has a solid limestone foundation. It is built on a succession of slight ridges and depressions to the west, each ridge a little higher than the last, rising to meet the plateau of the Ozarks. The first ridge is at Broadway, the fifth street back from the river. Railway tunnels running under the retail district take the traffic that crosses the river bridges to the Union Station.

The streets of downtown St. Louis are narrow, a legacy of other years. Wide highways, however, span the city from east to west, sometimes curving from the river to the river, and these great arteries of traffic make the entire city more accessible.

The Beautiful Park System

Parks are scattered in all sections of the city. Forest Park, the largest of these, is located just beyond the beautiful residence districts of the new St. Louis, and is a rolling strip of virgin forest. This park was the site of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. The building now occupied by the St. Louis Art Museum was the central hall of a group of buildings devoted to art at that time. Another building saved from the Exposition is the superb red granite entrance hall of Washington University, one of a group of the most appropriate collegiate buildings in the New World. In the southwestern part of the city is the Missouri Botanical Garden, popularly known from the donor as Shaw's Garden; this contains one of the fine botanical collections of the world.

The Quarries and the Builders

Nearly all St. Louis houses are constructed of brick and stone, and even today it is not necessary to go beyond the city limits for most of the building materials. The local quarries are still worked and brick is manufactured in enormous quantities, as well as lime, cement, sewer pipe, and terra cotta.

Jefferson Barracks at the southern end of St. Louis is one of the largest military reservations in the United States, and one of the four principal recruiting posts. St. Louis has several libraries, two large universities — St. Louis University (Catholic) and Washington University — a number of colleges, medical schools, and numerous convents and seminaries. The yearly Veiled Prophet's Pageant is modeled on the Mardi Gras of New Orleans.

The history of St. Louis begins with its founding, in 1764, as a fur trading post in the northern part of the Louisiana country. The city became part of the United States as a portion of the Louisiana Purchase. For 100 years, from 1764 to 1864, the business district of St. Louis remained where it was located on Pierre Laclede's map. With the coming of the railroads, the business district slipped back from the river.

Since 1923 St. Louis has been engaged in a ninety-million-dollar municipal improvement project. This embraces making new streets and widening others, increasing the water supply, improving sanitation, street lighting, eliminating grade crossings, new parks and playgrounds, hospitals, and municipal markets. The municipal center plan calls for the creation of a noble plaza in the heart of the city surrounded by various public buildings.

Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1941)

Bran

General Details

Title: Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language
Volumes: 2
Language: English
Publisher: Funk & Wagnalls Company
Year: 1941
Pages: 2,970

Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language Upon Original Plans Designed to Give, in Complete and Accurate Statement, in the Light of the Most Recent Advances in Knowledge, in the Readiest Form for Popular Use, the Orthography, Pronunciation, Meaning, and Etymology of All the Words, and the Meaning of Idiomatic Phrases, in the Speech and Literature of the English-Speaking Peoples, Together with Proper Names of All Kinds, the Whole Arranged in One Alphabetical Order is a massive 2-volume dictionary. It was originally published in 1913; I have the 1941 edition.

The dictionary is inset with a number of full-page plates, some in full-color with tissue paper protection. It begins with 5 pages containing portraits of the main editorial staff, followed by a list of all of the editors. After a thorough introduction on the dictionary's methodology and features, there is a guide to spelling and pronunciation. This is a very interesting section, as it introduces for the purposes of representing pronunciation a "revised scientific alphabet," created in 1911 by the National Education Association (with input from the American Philological Association and the Modern Language Association), meant to represent the sounds of English, one letter per sound; a history of this alphabet, as well as a cursive script for writing purposes, are given. There is a guide to forming compound words, a chart of various foreign alphabets, a key to abbreviations used in the dictionary, and the keys to pronunciation - all words in the dictionary have their pronunciations given twice, once in the "revised scientific alphabet" and once in an older pronunciation key.

This dictionary is derived from Issac Funk's A Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1893); the intent seems to be to record the entire language, but to also prescribe correct usage: "The chief function of a dictionary is to record usage; not, except in a limited degree, to seek to create it. Yet, when custom or usage varies, it is important that a dictionary should be most careful, in its preferences, to give its sanction to the best forms and tendencies. It has manifold opportunities to render good service to the language by characterizing certain words and variant forms of words, and certain meanings or usages, as archaic or obsolete, as foreign, dialectic, or provincial, as colloquial, vulgar, slang, or low, as inelegant or erroneously formed. In the Standard the aim has been to help, so far as this may legitimately be done in a work of the kind, to simplify and perfect the language" (xi, "Introduction"). The dictionary claims to have approximately 450,000 words defined within it, including regional words, scientific terminology, proper names, and geographical names. The dictionary is illustrated with over 7,000 pictures and around 32,000 illustrative quotations from literature.

After the main dictionary text are a number of appendices, including a list of words with disputed pronunciations (including a cross-reference to show the preferred pronunciation for each of the major dictionaries - Century, Webster, etc), rules for simplified (American) spelling (i.e. given the choice of -re or -er, pick -er), a glossary of foreign words and phrases, population statistics for various geographies, and, finally, a chronology of the world events by day.

Sample Entries

I look up "Saint Louis" and "umbrella" in all of the reference works featured on this site in order to provide fair comparison between them. "Umbrella" can be found on page 2597, and is accompanied by a couple of illustrations, including one familiar to anyone who has read my entry on Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia:

um—brel'la, 1 um-brel'ə; 2 ŭm-brĕl'a, n. 1. A canopy of silk, cotton, paper, or other suitable fabric, supported on a radiating folding frame, and carried (usually) in the hand as a protection against the sun or rain. Small umbrellas, when used exclusively as a shelter from the sun, are called sunshades or parasols, and when used in all weathers, en-tout-cas.

Umbrellas, tho seen in Egyptian and Assyrian sculpture, on Greek vases and figurines, and in medieval manuscripts, were not used in Europe as shelters from rain until the 18th century. In the East, as in Siam, they are emblems of royalty.

Known in England in Anglo-Saxon times, mentioned by Drayton (1620), Swift (City Shower, 1710), it [the umbrella] was assigned in Queen Anne's reign to women. Nelson's Perpetual Encyc. vol. xii, p. 256.

Jonas Hanway was not the first to introduce the umbrella to England, although he revived its use. In the Harleian Manuscripts there is proof beyond doubt that umbrellas were known to Anglo-Saxons, for in No. 603 of these there is the figure of a yeoman holding an umbrella over his lord. Beck asserts [Draper's Dictionary] that at the time that Stephen usurped the crown of England, umbrellas were in common use. Frank H. Vizetelly The Sunsahde and the Umbrella in The New Age May, 1909, p. 415.

2. The portion of the body of a medusa expanded like a bell or umbrella. 3. Conch. (1) [U-] A genus typical of Umbrellidæ. (2) An umbrella-shell. [< It. ombrella, dim. of ombra (< L. umbra), shade.] um-brel'‡ [Dial. or Obs.]; um-brel'lo†. — um-brel'lant'', n. A parasol-ant, as the sauba. — u.-bird, n. A South-American fruit-crow (genus Cephalopterus) having a broad crest likened to an umbrella; a dragoon-bird. C. ornatus is lustrous black with a crest of blue hair-like feathers, and a cervical, fleshy, feathered appendage. — u.-bush, n. A small, bushy Australian tree (Acacia osswaldi), with a hard, close-grained wood, and suitable for shade or for tall hedges. — u.-fern, n. The common brake or bracken. — u.-fir, n. The parasol-fir. See Sciadopitys. — u.-grass, n. 1. An Australian grass (Panicum decompositum) with millet-like seeds, which the natives make into cakes. 2. A sedge (Fuirena squarrosa) growing in wet sandy places from New Jersey to Texas. — u.-man, n. 1. A man who sells or mends umbrellas. 2. [London, Eng.] A man who sells fruit, confectionery, etc., under an umbrella. — u.-palm, n. 1. An ornamental hothouse palm (Kentia canterburyana), from Lord Howe's Island, with long pinnate leaves in a dense head. 2. The umbrella-plant. — u.-pine, n. Same as Umbrella-fir. — u.-plant, n. An East-African sedge (Cyperus alternifolius), cultivated for ornament. — u.-pulley, n. A pulley containing a skeleton umbrella-like projection around the center, to facilitate removal, insertion of cotters, etc. — u.-shell, n. An umbrelloid gastropod of warm seas, having an umbrella-like shell. — u.-stand, n. Anything, as a rack or a tall jar, for holding umbrellas. — u.-wort, n. Any plant of the genus Allionia.

This was all that was contained under the headword "umbrella," but there are other related entries listed after, such as "umbrellaed" and "umbrella-leaf."

The entry for "Saint Louis" is found on page 2160:

Saint Lou'is, 1. sēnt lū'ıs or lū'ı; 2 sānt lṳis or lṳi. 1. A French island at the mouth of the Senegal river, West Africa. 2. Lake, an expansion of the Saint Lawrence river at the mouth of the Ottawa, above Lachine Rapids. 3. A river in N.E. Minnesota; length, 220 m. to Lake Superior. 4. A county in N.E. Minnesota; 5,562 sq. m.; county-seat, Duluth. 5. A county in E. Missouri; 483 sq. m.; county-seat, Clayton. 6. A city in Missouri, on the Mississippi river; a manufacturing, commercial, and railroad center; seat of Christian Brothers College (Roman Catholic), founded in 1851; of Saint Louis University (Roman Catholic), founded in 1818; and of Washington University (non-sectarian), founded in 1853. 7. A city in Gratiot county, Mich. 8. A town in Saint Louis Island; capital of Senegal. 9. A town in Réunion Island.