<P> In 1940, the store was one of the first businesses to feature Muzak; it underwent a major renovation the following year . That decade the company opened stores in Brooklyn and Chicago . William Barnes died in 1945, at the age of 78, and his son John Wilcox Barnes assumed full control . The company underwent a significant expansion between the 1950s and the 1960s, opening an additional retail store on 23rd Street in Manhattan, as well as shops near the City University of New York, Harvard, and other Northeast college campuses . </P> <P> John Barnes died in 1964, and the company was sold to the conglomerate Amtel two years later . The business was purchased in 1971, by Leonard Riggio for $1.2 million . By then, it had been badly mismanaged over the prior two years and consisted only of "a significantly reduced wholesale operation and a single retail location--the store at 105 Fifth Avenue ." In 1974, Barnes & Noble became the first bookstore chain to advertise on television and a year later, the company became the first bookseller in America to discount books, by selling The New York Times best - selling titles at 40% off the publishers' list price . Between the 1970s and the 1980s, Barnes & Noble opened smaller discount stores, which eventually phased out in favor of larger stores . They also began to publish their own books to be sold to mail - order customers . These titles were primarily affordable reissues of out - of - print titles and selling them through mail - order catalogs allowed Barnes & Noble to reach new customers nationwide . </P> <P> In November 1974, in response to a question from a member of the studio audience, the British twin brothers Norris McWhirter and Ross McWhirter, who were editors of the British - produced Guinness Book of Records, claimed on the BBC One television programme Record Breakers that the Fifth Avenue store of Barnes and Noble had overtaken that of London's Foyles bookshop to become the world's biggest bookstore . </P> <P> Barnes & Noble continued to expand throughout the 1980s, and it purchased the primarily shopping mall - based B. Dalton chain from Dayton Hudson in 1986, for an estimated $275 million to $300 million . The last B. Dalton stores were scheduled to close in January 2010 . In 1989, Barnes and Noble had purchased the 22 - store chain Bookstop . </P>

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