English: Size of English Wikipedia in October 2006 (above) and August 2007 (right). See the Size article for current size comparisons.

The original version of this image was created in October 2006, using volumes 25cm high and 5cm thick (some 400 leaves), each page having two columns, each columns having 80 rows, and each row having 50 characters, ≈ 6MB per volume. As English Wikipedia has 4.4GB of text (October 2006) ≈ 750 volumes. Note that these are conservative estimates, and don't include images, tables, templates etc. which probably take up more surface than the text which describes them.

The grid has 1x1 meter squares, and the person should be 180 centimeters tall. It is actually a silhouette of the man from the Pioneer plaques. The artist used volume and shelf sizes of some encyclopedias they had.

Inspiration for the original image came to the original artist from the main reading room of the National Library of Serbia which, aside its main reading space, has two loooooong shelves, the left one filled with various book indices, and the right one with various encyclopedias and dictionaries, including works in a number of languages, some from 19th century (the artist thinks it even has 1911 EB). All Wikipedias printed together would probably fill that shelf entirely... and the other one, next year ([2007]).