About Maximapedia
Maximapedia is an online encyclopedia compiled from a mix of old encyclopedias, dictionaries, other reference works of history and original material. Some articles are new, some have been edited or reworked andsome are presented almost 'uncut' from public domain sources.
Our goal is to provide a broad coverage of topics, in particular including obscure, rare, ancient, in depth or hard-to-find knowledge.
Unlike some other online encyclopedias, Maximapedia has a complete subject index, arranged alphabetically, to assist rapid research and to enable the reader to explore new material that would not necessarily easily be revealed by web searches.
Maximapedia is an ongoing project, our ultimate goal is to be true to our name and provide the most free, useful reference articles we possibly can. Current article count is around 36,000.
If you have found a page that contains errors
A good proportion of the current material on Maximapedia started life as a scan of an ancient book, which was then converted to character text by optical character recognition ("OCR") process.
As is well known (and a source of much consternation to online researchers), current OCR technology is often found lacking in the task of rendering obscure texts - especially those which are ancient, contain diagrams, or were printed in unusual fonts.
The OCR process in particular reduces charts, pictures and tables to a series of incomprehensible characters. Thus, while some articles read fluently, others have become scrambled. OCR also often has trouble with the sequence of text, sections appearing out of order.
Proof reading such documents on an encyclopaedic scale, quickly becomes a task of Herculean proportions - hence a large number of articles still contain errors or even "random" sections. We thank you for your patience.
Where OCR has rendered an article imperfectly, readers are urged to refer to original "page image" PDFs of documents if possible. Often these can be found at Google books - and if a "good" phrase from the text is copy-pasted into Google, very often the Google books version of the file is the first result that will appear!
Notes for Searchers:
[1] some information in ancient articles, in particular scientific or geographical, while correct at the time it was written, may of course have been superseded - and such work is presented for the purposes of historical research. Where an article incorporates old material, a note should be found at the foot of the page notifying the reader.
[2] Most names of persons are listed with surname first, for example CHURCHILL, WINSTON. However, if a famous person is not found, consider searching under first name also.
Disclaimer - While great care was taken in the preparation of this website (www.maximapedia.com) and its contents, no guarantee is made as to the suitability of this website for any purpose whatsoever, nor of the accuracy, timeliness or usefulness of its information. This website is provided for general information and entertainment purposes only and the information provided on this web site should not be seen as, nor as a substitute for, legal, health, business, investment or other professional advice. The website's owner specifically disclaims any and all liability arising in conjunction with the use of the materials / information herein.
