@misty Nice post! And I definitely agree with your sentiments about crowning 'firsts' - especially since my first (... sorry) thought when I got to the Beethoven entry was that things like the Grolier Encyclopedia (1985/6) and Microsoft Bookshelf (1987) would be strong contenders for that title too, except were presumably well outside a consumer's reach at that point.

(Edit: I was thinking of the wrong Grolier disc apparently, it seems the KnowledgeDisc was a laserdisc. Cool but irrelevant!)