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.

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This Database has been 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 occuring 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.