Syed Waqar Hussain

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written by volunteers, has been turned into book which is 5000 pages long and 1 foot 7 inches thick.

Made by Rob Mathews, a 22 years old graphic design student from Brighton, Sussex, the book contains 437 featured articles from the popular internet resource and comes up to his knee when stood on the floor.

Wikipedia, which carries articles which can generally be edited by anyone who can access the website, was launched in 2001 and is currently the most popular general reference work on the internet.

It took Matthews, took two weeks to make the book as a statement about how people are now dependent on the internet for information. He said; “I am comparing the internet wikipedia to a traditional encyclopedia by putting it in the same format.

Matthews admitted the task of putting the book together had been no easy feat. He said; “It was difficult to produce, there was a littile bit of trial and error when it came to binding, as I’d never tried to produce a book of that scale before.

“Some of the tools that would normally be used can’t cope with producsing a book on that scale.” Mr Matthews said he had had a great repsonse to the book, which he later hopes to sell.

He said; “The reation’s ben great – it makes people laugh, which is good.”