Free Electronic Dictionary

I'm trying to get this free ebook of the 1811 Unabridged dictionary to work on my computer. You can download the thing from The Gutenberg Project. Problem is, it's got all these funky character things in it. I know it's supposed to help you pronounce the words, but I can't just do a search on a form of a word and go right to it.

My eventual goal, being the computer geek that I am, is to write a little program that would search these text files and give you a searchable, free, electronic dictionary. Of course, the words are old, old, old, but that's part of its nostalgic appeal.