Encyclopedias

The attempt to hold everything. Pliny, the Chinese leishu, Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as a political act, the Britannica and its door-to-door salesmen, Brockhaus, and Wikipedia, the largest of them all, written by nobody in particular.

Part of Books

25 moments in this segment.

1. 1493 - Liber Chronicarum (2022-12-06) 01. The Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber Chronicarum), printed by Anton Koberger in 1493, the most heavily illustrated book of the incunable period.
2. 1543 - Andreas Vesalius - De humani corporis fabrica libri septem - Museum Hof van Busleyden Mechelen 6-07-2018. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the anatomical atlas whose woodcuts reset the relationship between text and illustration.
3. 1543 - Vesalius, 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica Epitome' Wellcome L0048809. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the anatomical atlas whose woodcuts reset the relationship between text and illustration.
4. 1543 - Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) Menselijk skelet - Museum Hof van Busleyden Mechelen 6-07-2018 12-39-03. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the anatomical atlas whose woodcuts reset the relationship between text and illustration.
5. 1751-06-15 - Encyclopedie de D'Alembert et Diderot - Premiere Page - ENC 1-NA5. Cover of the "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers" (Encyclopaedia or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts) Edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D'Alembert (retouched version: annoying minor dark spots removed; two greater luminous spots (top + bottom right) removed; little perspective transformation of the whole page; little retouchi
6. 1760 - Encyclopedie methodique - Arts aratoires, Pl27. A plate or page from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, whose engraved plates documented the trades, including printing itself.
7. 1760 - Encyclopedie methodique - Arts aratoires, Pl42. A plate or page from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, whose engraved plates documented the trades, including printing itself.
8. 1760 - Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert (château de Menthon-Saint-Bernard). A plate or page from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, whose engraved plates documented the trades, including printing itself.
9. 1764 - Encyclopedie frontispice full. Encyclopedie's frontispiece, full version. Engraving by Benoît Louis Prévost. Title page of the ' Encyclopedia or Reasoned Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts ( Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers in the original title) a vast encyclopedia published in the eighteenth century, in French, by a substantial group of intellectuals under the direction of Dider
10. 1890-06-15 - Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary b37 374-2. Illustration from Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1890, 1907)
11. 2011-05-20 - A 1493 book walks in off the street. Archive news item: a man carries an original Nuremberg Chronicle into a Utah museum in a plastic bag to have it appraised.
12. 2011-09-23 - The Book of Curiosities. An Oxford historian of Islamic science presents an early Arabic world map from the Book of Curiosities at the Bodleian.
13. 2014-12-02 - Into the vault: the Encyclopédie. A university special-collections film examining an original set of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie.
14. 2015-03-04 - The Nuremberg Chronicle at York Minster Library. A special-collections librarian opens the 1493 Liber Chronicarum, printed by Anton Koberger with over 1,800 woodcut illustrations from around 645 blocks, one of the most heavily illustrated books of the incunable period.
15. 2016-02-18 - The controversial origins of the Encyclopédie. A TED-Ed animation on how the Enlightenment encyclopaedia was assembled and why authorities tried to suppress it.
16. 2016-04-07 - Restoring a Nuremberg Chronicle. Conservators at Wake Forest describe the printing of the 1493 chronicle and the process of repairing a surviving copy leaf by leaf.
17. 2016-09-20 - Jeffrey Ravel on Diderot's Encyclopédie. An MIT Libraries film in which a historian discusses the compilation and censorship of the Encyclopédie.
18. 2018-12-20 - Diderot's Encyclopédie and the plates. Getty lecture on the 18th-century French Encyclopédie, its 28 volumes, its engraved plates of trades and machines, and the censorship it worked around.
19. 2019-05-09 - Exploring a medieval bestiary. A British Library curator examines an illuminated medieval bestiary page by page.
20. 2021-02-25 - The curious history of the world's first encyclopaedias. A university lecture tracing attempts to gather all knowledge into books, from antiquity to the Enlightenment.
21. 2021-12-06 - The city in the Nuremberg Chronicle. Harvard's Jeffrey Hamburger on how the 1493 chronicle pictured Nuremberg and other cities, reusing the same woodblocks for different places.
22. 2024-01-27 - Vesalius's Fabrica, annotated by its author. Christie's on De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the anatomical atlas whose woodcuts were cut in Venice and printed in Basel, and on an annotated copy revealing Vesalius's own corrections.
23. 2024-03-13 - Printing Press Single Cylinder Perfecting 1880 Mackenzie National Encyclopaedia. From National Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge. Published by William Mackenzie, 1880.
24. 2026-02-20 - Vesalius and the anatomical atlas. The National Library of Medicine on the 1543 Fabrica: its scale, its illustrations, and why it changed how the body was pictured.
25. 2026-08-08 - The scattering of the Yongle Dadian. Account of how the Ming imperial encyclopedia was lost, fire, theft, and the 1900 sacking of Beijing, leaving only a few hundred of its 11,095 volumes, now spread across collections worldwide.