Short answers, pulled from the story.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768, during the Scottish Enlightenment. Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell began the first edition that year, with William Smellie compiling most of the articles.
Encyclopædia Britannica ended its print editions in 2012, after 244 years of continuous publication. The 32 volumes of the 2010 instalment were the last to appear on paper; all subsequent editions have been published exclusively online.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is owned by an investment group led by Jacob E. Safra, a Swiss financier who purchased the company in 1996. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
Yes. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. acquired Merriam-Webster, the American dictionary publisher, in 1964. Merriam-Webster remains part of the company's portfolio.
Sears bought Britannica outright in 1920 and reported a loss of $1.8 million within three years, selling it back in 1923. Sears later resumed ownership in 1928 after financing the fourteenth edition, and in 1941 gave the company to the University of Chicago.
The fifteenth edition, published in 1974 under the name Britannica 3, was divided into a ten-volume Micropædia, a 19-volume Macropædia, and a one-volume guide called the Propædia. A two-volume index was added in 1985.