Wikipedia Turns Twenty
In April 1766, the final volumes of Encyclopédie rolled off a clandestine French printing press carrying the mark of a foreign printer. Subscribers, at this point, may have despaired of ever seeing them—in 1750 they had been promised 10 volumes over five years. The finished product consisted of 28 volumes of 71,818 articles from A (the letter) to Zzuéné (the Egyptian town of Aswan), totalling 20 million words and including 3,129 illustrations. It represented the work of over a hundred contributors led by editors Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste D’Alembert. The encyclopédists were criticised (fairly) for plagiarism. “One may harvest the way bees do… but the thievery of the ant, which walks off with the whole thing, ought never to be imitated” the first volume’s Jesuit reviewer wrote archly. The encyclopédists were inconsistent, and when wandering away from their areas of expertise made some odd claims. Readers of Diderot’s article on the Human Species learned that the Swedes live underground, call the devil with a drum, have never heard of God or religion, and offer their …