1. Natural history 3.06 MB

Over 37 volumes, Pliny chronicled the natural world, including quite a few fundamental misunderstandings. Did you know that fennel root somehow helps snakes shed their skin? It doesn’t. Sorry, Pliny.

2. Original Encyclopedia Britannica 3.59 MB

The first edition, published in 1768, comprised just three volumes, released in weekly installments. It included such ­scintillating six-word articles as “Woman: the female of man, see homo.”

3. Canon of medicine 7.5 MB

Persian Polymath Avicenna’s compendium served as the definitive medical textbook from its publication in 1025 all the way through the beginning of the 18th century.

4. Wikipedia (English) 27,000 MB

The internet’s proverbial monkeys have tapped out more than 5.5 million articles in our native tongue alone, showing no signs of stopping.

5. Encarta 1,600 MB

Microsoft’s brush with CD-ROM encyclopedias lasted from only 1993 to 2009, but masochists can still buy the full set of compact discs on eBay.

6. The internet (in 2014) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 MB

This article was originally published in the Spring 2018 Intelligence issue of Popular Science.