Four Editions and Eight Publishers: A History of the Encyclopedia of Computer Science

Since the publication of the first edition in 1976, the Encyclopedia of Computer Science has been the standard one-volume reference work in computer science. Surprisingly for a successful book (the fourth edition was published in 2000), the Encyclopedia has been owned by eight different publishers since 1971. This article relates the salient facts in the history of the Encyclopedia and the vicissitudes experienced during the preparation of the four editions.