Broom
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Broom. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a well known household implement. The name belongs first of all to various shrubs of the pea family. They have long, pliant, willow-like branches. The common Scotch or Irish broom is about twenty feet high, with a wealth of erect, slender branches and large yellow locust-like flowers appearing in early summer. The twigs were much used in the making of coarse household and stable brushes or besoms, just as bundles of willows, hazels, or other twigs were used for similar purposes in our colonial days. Through the use of this particular plant for sweeping, the old name of besom fell out of use in favor of broom. In America a very excellent besom, or broom, as it came to be called, was made from a suitable length of a hickory sapling. The upper part was shaved down to form a handle. The lower end, usually a tough butt, about four inches in diameter, was divided or shredded into fine splints, making a heavy, but exceedingly durable and effective broom for coarse work. A turkey wing was used for lighter work. The broom now in common use is made from broom-corn, a variety of sorghum. The "tops," or slender, tough, seed-bearing panicles, proved to be an excellent material for carpet brooms and whisk brushes, and came into general favor for that purpose about 1850. The last United States census reported 1,526 broom factories with a capital of $9,616,780, and an annual output valued at $18,490,847. Many protests have been made by these manufacturers against the making of brooms in penitentiaries, but as the broom makers have formed large combinations or trusts their complaints now have a less just foundation.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the English name of the common shrub, sarothamnus, formerly cytisus scoparius, and of the genus to which it belongs. It has large beautiful yellow flowers. Butchers' broom is the English name for the liliaceous genus ruscus, and especially for the ruscus aculeatus. Irish broom is the sarothamnus patens, a native of Spain and Portugal. The word is also applied to a besom for sweeping.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 note that broom-corn brooms had ruled since about 1850 was written at the industry's peak: the 1,526 American broom factories it counted have dwindled to a handful of specialist makers, most household brooms now being moulded plastic or synthetic fibre, and most broom corn that is still grown coming from Mexico rather than the Illinois and Oklahoma farms that once supplied the trade. The vacuum cleaner, commercially new when both accounts were written, took over the carpet work the whisk and carpet broom were made for. Collier's 1921 name Sarothamnus scoparius has since been folded back into Cytisus scoparius, the name it lists as the older one. And the shrub itself has changed status: planted as an ornamental, Scotch broom is now a declared noxious weed in California, Oregon, Washington, Australia and New Zealand.
Written for this edition, 2026.