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Case file

Joel Mokyr

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “american economic historian”. Today it says “american and israeli economic historian and the robert h”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “Israeli American economic historian”. It now reads “Economic historian (born 1946)”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
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The opening as it read in 2015

Joel Mokyr (born 26 July 1946) is an American and Israeli economic historian .1 Mokyr was born in the Netherlands and raised in Israel . Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University .2 Mokyr holds a joint appointment in economics as well as a Sackler Professorial Fellow at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University .3 He is particularly interested in the economic history of technology and population, but considers himself a general-purpose economic historian. A former editor of the Journal of Economic History and President of the Economic History Association , he served as the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History , and continues to be editor in chief of a book series published by Princeton University Press , The Princeton University Press Economic History of the Western World . A former chair of the Economics Department and President of the Economic History Association, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a number of comparable institutions in Europe. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (5Vols) . Princeton Economic History of the Western World , accessed 2009-09-08.4

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 659958802.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “american economic historian”. Today it says “american and israeli economic historian and the robert h”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “Israeli American economic historian”. It now reads “Economic historian (born 1946)”. Read the current article and compare.
201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

american economic historian

Now

american and israeli economic historian and the robert h

Sections that no longer exist

Present on October 6, 2023, absent today, with no near-matching heading in the current article and the article shorter overall, so this is not a renamed heading or a topic absorbed into a fuller treatment. 3 sections of 400 characters or more gone since October 6 2023, with the article 2,236 characters shorter.

  • Industrial Revolution
  • Resistance to new technologies
  • Works
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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