Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia

» see comptons.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

compton's sat in the part of cd-rom history i can read about but did not personally use in turkey. encarta won that war in the homes i knew. the cd-rom encyclopedia we had was encarta turkish edition, not compton's, and i did not know anyone with a compton's installer in the late 90s. the product had its real life inside us schools and us households.

compton's newmedia shipped the compton's multimedia encyclopedia on cd-rom in 1989. it was the first multimedia encyclopedia anyone had shipped, with the full print text plus audio and video clips of historical scenes, drawing on the back catalog of the print compton's pictured encyclopedia from 1922. the software publishers association gave it the excellence in software award for best education program in 1991. for a few years it was the demo disc that came in the box with every new family pc.

britannica sold compton's newmedia to the tribune company in 1993. tribune sold it on to the learning company in 1999, and mattel bought the learning company that same year before writing the value off when toys failed to combine with edutainment software. in march 2002 britannica bought the publishing rights back. the compton's interactive cd-rom did not get another release.

~ the dossier ~

~ how it landed ~

the 1989 release was a genuine first. nobody had shipped a working multimedia encyclopedia on a cd-rom before. the disc held the full text of the print encyclopedia plus audio and video clips of historical scenes. on a 386 with a single-speed cd drive it worked. it was slow but the trick was real. for a school report in 1992 it was the closest thing to a research database a kid could touch at home.

~ the unraveling ~

microsoft encarta launched in 1993 with sharper interface design and a microsoft distribution channel that put it on every windows pc shipping in north america through the rest of the decade. compton's stayed competitive on content for a while, but the ownership shuffle made the product feel adrift. by the late 90s the question stopped being which cd-rom encyclopedia you bought and started being whether you bought one at all.

wikipedia went live in january 2001 and had thirty thousand english articles by march 2002. britannica bought the compton's rights back the same month, looking at a category that was about to vanish. the last compton's interactive cd-rom release sat in the catalog for a year or two before the brand quietly retired to the print line that had started the whole thing in 1922.

~ what got buried with it ~

compton's loss was not really about the brand. the entire cd-rom reference category went under in the same window, with encarta hanging on until 2009 because microsoft kept funding it and britannica's own multimedia disc dying inside the print decline. compton's had the dignity of going first in 1989 and the indignity of going through four owners in nine years before the brand returned home to britannica. what got buried with it was the idea that you would pay a hundred dollars for the world on a shiny disc.

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