Most everyone of a certain age knows of the “Encyclopedia Brittanica,” but few know how it came about. For its origin, we can thank a Scotsman, William Smellie (1740-1795), a printer, naturalist and antiquary. Smellie was joined in his project by the 4″ 6″ Andrew Bell, who dealt with jokes about his enormous nose by bolting from the room and returning with an even larger papier-mache one. The first edition of the Brittanica, which appeared in 100 weekly installments from 1768 to 1771, was notorious for gross errors and wild speculations. It stated, for example, that excessive use of tobacco had the effect of “drying up the brain to a little black lump considting of mere membranes.” It described California as “…a large country in the West Indies, possibly an island or a peninsula.” The entry for “woman” read simply, “The female of man. See homo.“
Future editions gradually ironed out inaccuracies but were still far from perfect (and full of curious nuance — the 1956 edition of “Encyclopedia Brittanica” described rock ‘n’ roll as “insistent savagery.” By the late 1950s, the sheer quantity of unreliable entries evading correction so angered an American physicist named Dr. Harvey Einbinder (1926-2013) that he spent five years combing through the volumes to collect and publish the mistakes. Einbinder”s “Myth of the Encyclopedia Brittanica” appeared in 1964, a furious 390-page litany of errors. Science Magazine praised Einbinder as a “dedicated prince of iconoclasts” who “rips into his subject from all angles and with devastating effect.” Critics even suggested that the editorial board of the “Encyclopedia Britannica” hire Eindinder as a factual watchdog. This was not an idea that appealed to either irritated party.
Source: The Madman’s Library: Thke Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History by Edward Brooke-Hitching