The greatest and the worst indexes

Abstract

1. The earliest, historically, is most certainly by the 16thcentury ‘father of bibliography’, Conrad Gessner, hailed by Hans Wellisch as also the first compiler of multilingual and multiscript indexes (Wellisch, 1978). His Historia Animalium, published in five volumes from 1551 to 1554, included indexes to the names of four-footed animals in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, German, French, Spanish, English, Polish, Russian and Czech, all printed in separate sequences by language; the Greek and Hebrew names were shown in the original scripts, Arabic and Persian were partially transliterated, partially rendered in Hebrew letters. All entries were alphabetized letter by letter.