Encyclopaedia Britannica stops printing after 244 years

After 244 years of publication and seven million editions (comprising a set of 13 volumes) sold, the venerable reference bible Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

The 32-tome 2010 edition is therefore now the last, and could well become a collector's item.

Brittanica will now focus on digital expansion amid rising competition from websites such as Wikipedia. In fact, some wonder what took the dinosaur so long to die.

The firm, which used to sell its encyclopaedias door-to-door, now generates almost 85 per cent its revenue from online sales. It recently launched a digital version of its encyclopaedias for tablet PCs.

Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc, suggested that the encyclopedia was already something of a relic within the company itself, which has long since moved its main business away from its trademark publication and into online educational tools.

"The sales of printed encyclopaedias have been negligible for several years," said Jorge Cauz president of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "We knew this was going to come … in many instances doing a keyword search in an online resource is simply a lot faster then standing up looking at the index of the Britannica and then finding the appropriate volume.''