Without these four 30-year-old diskettes containing Civilization I, World History Encyclopedia would probably not exist. Thousands of schools would be missing a trustworthy and free history resource and millions of history enthusiasts wouldn’t have a place to get their daily dose of history.
That’s a crazy thought considering these relics hold about the same amount of data that your browser downloads when reading a single article on World History Encyclopedia!
I’m the Founder & Chairman of World History Encyclopedia (you may know me as thamis on CivFanatics) – let me explain with a personal history story.
It was over 30 years ago, in 1992 that I went on vacation in the national parks of the American Southwest with my family. My father was terminally ill with cancer and this was essentially a last dream trip. We stopped at a strip mall in a Californian desert town to buy some groceries, when we spotted a computer shop. Our family had just gotten a computer at the time, so we were very excited and my father and I browsed through their selection of games.
My father picked out Civilization, which I was not very keen on; to my 10-year-old self this looked boring. I was more interested in action games, including a game about helicopters (it was terrible) and a game about castles (pretty good). In the end, we got all three games, because my father kind of insisted on getting Civilization.
I didn’t play Civilization until many months after my father had passed away. It was complex, deep, cerebral – and in English… which complicated things as I had barely started learning the language at school. Still, I was soon hooked and with the patience only a kid with too much time on their hands can muster, I figured it out and greatly improved my English in the process.
The game introduced me to many historical civilizations, characters, and concepts. I learned about Hammurabi of Babylon, Ramesses the Great of Egypt, the invention of irrigation and the wheel, legions, caravels, taxation, trade and so much more. The game brought the past alive and instilled a lifelong fascination with history in me. I spent hundreds of hours playing the game, became proficient with computers and finally learned how to program.
I continued playing its sequels and created a popular mod for Civilization III (and later for Civilization IV) called “The Ancient Mediterranean,” published right here on CivFanatics. I was invited to become a development tester on Civilization IV which provided me with an entry point into the games industry, where I had a twelve-year career as a game designer on historical games, primarily for the Total War series. I learned more about history and improved my understanding of computer programming along the way.
The idea for Ancient History Encyclopedia (now World History Encyclopedia) was born from a little website I made to provide some historical context for “The Ancient Mediterranean” mod, circa 2005. I had noticed that the timeline pages on that site were getting more readers than the game-related ones! That’s why I programmed a dynamic timeline website. Some of that original code is still running on the server today!
The website went live in early 2009 and I soon realised a few things: Writing an encyclopedia was hard work, I wasn’t particularly enjoying the writing part, and I wasn’t very good at historical writing. I needed help! I had recently inherited some money and I paid for the first 100 contributions out of my own pocket. Several of the contributors stayed on, others joined later, and over time World History Encyclopedia grew steadily.
We built a strong editorial team that carefully reviews and fact-checks all contributions before publishing and we incorporated as a non-profit organisation in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. World History Encyclopedia is used in education worldwide (we publish in 45 languages now) and has been recommended by the School Library Journal, Teach Magazine, Common Sense Education, Oxford University and many others.
It’s crazy to think how seemingly unrelated things came together and led to the creation of the world’s most-read history publication with millions of monthly readers. Civilization was one of the last gifts my father ever bought me, and it was a true gift for my path in life. No item that I own from my past has had more impact on my trajectory.
Without these four little diskettes, things may have gone very differently. Without CivFanatics, I would never have published a mod, found a community and realised that I loved the intersection of history and technology. Thank you to my father for insisting on buying this fantastic game, thanks to CivFanatics for providing a community, and thanks to Sid Meier and his team for making it all those years ago.
If you love history as much as I do, please consider donating to World History Encyclopedia. We’re a non-profit organisation and donations are tax-deductible in the United States. Thank you!