Encyclopedia Britannica unveiled a compact disk Wednesday on which its entire 26-volume edition is stored with sight, sound and animated illustrations and new research indexes designed to revolutionize scholarship in the 1990s.
The publishing innovation was to be demonstrated to the media by Stanley D. Frank, president of Britannica Software Inc., a subsidiary of Encyclopedia Britannica, at the New York Academy of Sciences. Frank said that when searching for a comparison to the new reference disk "one recalls Gutenberg's use of movable type more than 500 years ago."The disk has more than 600 megabytes of memory, the equivalent of 1,800 of the floppy disks now available on the market.
"This truly heralds the start of a new era," Frank said, explaining that the new product, known as Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia, expands the horizons of the modern encyclopedia, which has changed little in its essential form since the 17th century.
"This new multimedia approach enhances a student's capacity to understand and make connections among the millions of information bits in this world-class data base. Our Compton's is the encyclopedia of the 21st century."
Frank headed a team of 60 who worked 18 months to develop the CD-ROM disk, the first in which multiple mediums have been incorporated.
It operates on IBM-AT and IBM-PS/2 model 30 personal computers, as well as on the compatible Tandy Model 1000 TL. Compatible CD-ROM drives include the Sony CDV-100, Hitachi and Amdek.
Besides the nearly 9 million-word data base the disk provides access to Webster's Intermediate Dictionary with 65,000 entries. It also offers 15,000 illustrations, including charts, maps and diagrams, with about a fourth of the illustrations in full color and some animated. Illustrations can be called up in less than three seconds.