Editions
- 1988: First edition. It included an Introduction by Carl Sagan that tells the following story: Sagan was in London for a scientific conference in 1974, and between sessions he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. "I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton... Stephen Hawking was a legend even then." In his Introduction, Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the "worthy successor" to Newton and P. A. M. Dirac, both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics.
The Introduction was removed after the first edition, as it was copyrighted by Sagan, rather than by Hawking or the publisher, and the publisher did not have the right to reprint it in perpetuity. Hawking wrote his own introduction for later editions.
- 1996: Illustrated, updated and expanded edition. This hardcover edition contained full color illustrations and photographs to help further explain the text, as well as the addition of topics that were not included in the original book.
- 1998: The Tenth Anniversary Edition. It features the same text as the one published in 1996, but was also released in paperback and has only a few diagrams included.
September 2005 saw the release of A Briefer History of Time (a collaboration with Leonard Mlodinow), which is an abridged version of the original book. It was updated again to address new issues that have arisen due to further scientific development.
Read more about this topic: A Brief History Of Time
Famous quotes containing the word editions:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)