world's first Encyclopaedia

Q: Who compiled the world's first encyclopedia?

A: In all probability, the first encyclopaedia was compiled by the Greek philosopher Plato's nephew, Speusippus, who recorded his uncle's ideas on mathematics, natural history and philosophy in about 348 BC. Speusippus also included Aristotle's lecture notes in the encyclopedia. The Chinese, on the other hand, claim that the Yongle Canon or Yongle Dadian, compiled between 1403 AD and 1407 AD and running to more than 11,000 books, was the world's first encyclopedia. The whole work was too vast to print, hence only two manuscripts were made.

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The prototype of the modern encyclopedia was Ephraim Chamber's Cyclopaedia published in 1728 while the first English language encyclopaedia was the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1768 which became available on the Internet in 1999. The Encyclopaedia Americana was the first multi-volume encyclopaedia which was published in thirteen volumes between 1829 and 1833 in the United States and had expended to thirty volumes by 1919.