Obsolete

Threw out the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica  today. The leather binding was disintegrating, Second Story Books wouldn't accept it as a gift, we have no room for it in our new apartment, it's available online at Gutenberg.org and other places.

It was the last time that essentially all of human knowledge could be summarized in one set of books. It had articles by Swinburne, T. H. Huxley, Kropotkin, James Jeans, Bertrand Russell, and Ernest Rutherford. 

Wikipedia: "The eleventh edition's articles are still of value and interest to modern readers and scholars, especially as a cultural artifact: the British Empire was at its maximum, imperialism was largely unchallenged, much of the world was still ruled by monarchs, and the tragedy of the modern world wars was still in the future."

Still I feel a good deal of sadness at seeing it just trashed.