The ARTFL Project

One of the first general encyclopedias to be published in English, Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (2 vols. published in 1728, with 2 supplement vols. in 1753) served as the primary inspiration for Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie which owed its inception to a French translation of Chambers' work begun in 1743 by John Mills and Gottfried Sellius. The subtitle of the 1728 Edition summarizes the scope of Chambers' project: Cyclopaedia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences: containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial; the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c; among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c: The whole intended as a course of ancient and modern learning.

NOVEMBER 2018 UPDATE: We are in the process of digitizing the fourth edition (1741) of the Cyclopaedia. The first volume of this new digital edition is now available, and we expect the second volume to be available within the next few months. Unlike the first edition of the Cyclopaedia discussed below, this conversion involves professional data capture of high-quality page image scans taken by the University of Chicago Library.

SEARCH volume 1 of the fourth edition of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia

The first edition of the Cyclopaedia, searchable via the link below, was built using an un-corrected Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process on page images from the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. Given the inaccuracies of any OCR project, word searches will be run through a similarity function in the PhiloLogic3 search engine. Results will then be displayed based on the frequency of words occurring in articles. Article Headwords will point to the page image on which the Article begins - the user can then navigate through the dictionary on a page by page basis. Unfortunately, the similarity function will not allow any Regex or boolean operators in word searches. Click here for a discussion concerning the pros and cons of "dirty" OCR projects.

This version of the Cyclopaedia will remain available until digitization of the fourth edition is complete.

SEARCH the first edition of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia