Detail map of Brooklyn, New York, United States Overview map of Brooklyn, New York, United States

A: Brooklyn, New York, United States

"The Knowledge Disc," and the "New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia or CD-ROM": Early Electronic Books

1985

In 1985 Grolier published the text-only Knowledge Disc: The World's First Laser Videodisc Encyclopedia. This was aimed at the "school market." Based on the Academic American Encyclopedia 1984 edition, it comprised 30,000 entries and 9 million words. 

Also in 1985 Grolier published the text-only New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM. The text published may have been similar to the Videodisc version. Editions of the CD-ROM were updated quarterly—faster than the print edition, and the CD-ROM edition became significantly different from the print edition. The work was published under several different titles: The Electronic Encyclopedia (1986), The Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia (1987), The New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia (1988–91), The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1992). The 1990 edition was the first to feature pictures, and the 1992 edition was the first to deliver video and sound. The last edition published on CD-ROM was the 2003 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia

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