Noah Webster

Noah Webster (1758–1843) was an American lexicographer, educator and writer, often called the father of American scholarship and education. A Yale graduate and Revolutionary-era patriot, he published A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, whose spelling book taught generations of American children to read. He campaigned for a strong federal government, copyright laws and spelling reform, wrote essays on politics and education, and founded a newspaper in New York. His American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, established distinctively American spellings and remains the basis of the dictionaries that bear his name.