There were "digital" encyclopedias before Wikipedia? Using VGA graphics and tiny...

linguae · on Jan 9, 2020

Yes. In the 1990s and 2000s Microsoft sold encyclopedia software called Encarta:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta

I remember some consumer PCs being bundled with Encarta in the 1990s and 2000s.

I also remember Grolier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grolier) publishing CD-ROM encyclopedias in the 1990s.

glandium · on Jan 9, 2020

The Internet Archive has copies of Encarta: https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Encarta%22

roywiggins · on Jan 9, 2020

This Facebook bot posts an Encarta95 entry every so often

https://m.facebook.com/encarta95postbot

roywiggins · on Jan 9, 2020

Reach back a little further and you'll find this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

Anyway, VGA graphics just means you don't need to store megabyte sized images since you can't display them anyway. 700MB is quite a lot if you're just trying to replace a paper encyclopedia.