Today in 1758, the man whose name has become synonymous with the word 'dictionary' was born. Noah 
Webster, also known as the "Father of American Scholarship and Education," was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Noah Webster came of age during the American Revolution and took on several teaching positions to help pay for his law degree at Yale University. However, Mr. Webster never practiced law finding it not to his liking. Instead, he continued teaching.
He did not like the American elementary schools that existed at the time finding them overcrowded, lacking qualified teachers and ill-equipped with inadequate textbooks from England. As a son of the Revolution, Webster also believed in American cultural independence believing that America's children should learn from American textbooks reflecting the country's distinctive language style. He began writing a three-volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which included a speller, a grammar and a reader. His goal was rescue the "native tongue" hijacked by the British aristocracy believing language should be governed by the common use of the people. His textbooks affectionately called the "Blue-Backed Speller" due to its blue cover was the standard textbook for American children for 100 years!
It is Noah Webster who is also responsible for the Americanization of the English language in part by making several spelling changes such as the -er in theater from the British theatre. He removed the second l in such words as traveller and the u in words such as colour and honour changing them to color and honor. However, not all his recommended changes in spelling were accepted. See Noah Webster's spelling reform.
In 1806 he printed A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first American English dictionary. A year later he began work on his An American Dictionary of the English Language which would take him 27 years to finish. Mr. Webster hoped that through this dictionary he could standardize American speech since spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary varied from region to region. Finally in 1828 at the ripe age of seventy, he published the first edition of his dictionary.
Still today, the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the standard for Americans and holds an honored place in classrooms throughout the country. Noah Webster's name is even a synonym for dictionary. It is quite common to hear an American student ask, "Can I borrow your Webster's?"
Read more about Noah Webster at Wikipedia.
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