The word dictionary has been widely used as a name for encyclopaedias, and Scalich's pioneer use of encyclopaedia did not find general acceptance until Denis Diderot made it fashionable with his historic French encyclopaedia, the Encyclopédie, although cyclopaedia was then becoming fairly popular as an alternative term.
The Englishman Ephraim Chambers went even further in describing his internationally influential Cyclopaedia (1728) as an universal dictionary of arts and sciences; containing an explication of the terms, and an account of the things signified thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine, compiled from the best authors.
The English scientist and inventor William Nicholson was first in the field with his Dictionary of Chemistry (1795), published by Sir Richard Phillips (who later issued C.T. Watkin's Portable Cyclopaedia).
The Encyclopédie of Diderot began as a French translation of Chambers' work, though it eventually went far beyond the Cyclopaedia.
Similarly, The New Cyclopaedia, in the early 19th century, incorporated articles on subjects such as candle making and coach building.
In 1753 a two-volume supplement to the 7th edition of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia was compiled by George Lewis Scott, a tutor to the English royal family.
The term Cenozoic, originally spelled Kainozoic, was introduced by English geologist John Phillips in an 1840 Penny Cyclopaedia article to designate the most recent of the three major subdivisions of the Phanerozoic Eon.
Of all the many examples, the Cyclopaedia (1728) of the English encyclopaedist Ephraim Chambers has been outstanding in its influence, for Diderot's and Rees's encyclopaedias would have been very different if Chambers had not demonstrated what a modern encyclopaedia could be.
Between 1801 and 1805 he wrote the music articles for Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia and was handsomely rewarded with a fee of £1,000.
