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| Merriam Webster Logo |
In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. With 30,000 entries, the Compendious Dictionary was not much larger than a modern-day paperback dictionary, but it was a ground-breaking book; the first to describe English as it was being spoken in North America. He then set to work on a much larger book, An American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster L.L.D., which was published in 1828 when he was 70 years old. The appearance of An American Dictionary was a revolutionary event in American history. It boldly staked the claim for the existence of a uniquely American form of English, as evidenced by words such as "skunk" and "chowder" that had never appeared in any British dictionary, as well as vocabulary of the still-new American political experiment, like "Senate" and "Congress." Webster introduced other innovations as well. His book advocated the use of new, simpler forms of spelling--he altered "musick" to "music" and "centre" to "center," to name but two examples. An American Dictionary won almost immediate acceptance by public institutions in the United States, including legislatures, courts, and universities. However, selling for $20 a copy, an enormous sum of money at the time, the two-volume set was unlikely to be purchased in large numbers by the country's middle class.
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| Noah Webster |
In 1841, 82-year-old Webster published a revised and expanded edition of his lexicographical masterpiece. In 1843 he died. Not long afterward brothers George and Charles Merriam entered the dictionary business. Since 1831 their printing company in Springfield, Massachusetts, the G. & C. Merriam Co., had been producing everything from wallpaper and calendars to bibles and a series of law books. The Merriam's negotiated a contract with Webster's heirs. It gave them the right to sell the remaining copies of the 1841 dictionary and, more important, to produce their own revisions of the book. The dictionary provided the company with a clear focus. In 1847 with the editorial assistance of Webster's son-in-law and literary executor, Professor Chauncey Goodrich of Yale University, the Merriam company published the third edition of An American Dictionary. The Merriam brothers' shrewd business sense made their revision as revolutionary as Webster's first dictionary had been.
Using smaller type and eliminating most of the generous margins, the Merriam's reduced the physical size of the dictionary from two volumes to one. Their production savings were so considerable that they were able to lower the retail price of the dictionary from $20 to $6. Webster's family was shocked. But the G. & C. Merriam Co. had published a book that was, in its way, the first mass-market dictionary. Middle class Americans could afford it, as could most schools. The Merriams' marketing campaign, targeted aggressively at educational sales, went a long way toward establishing Webster's as the definitive dictionary. Having first encountered the dictionary in school and having regularly used it there, many people later bought one for use at home. In 1859 the G. & C. Merriam Co. brought out another revision. In addition to including sections on new words and synonyms, it was the first American dictionary to use illustrations.
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| G&C Merriam Original Springfield Office |
In 1890 G. & C. Merriam made ready to release the latest revision of An American Dictionary of the English Language. Much had transpired, however, in the years since Noah Webster published his early editions. By 1889, however, the copyrights on all of Webster's books had long expired; that very year the copyright on the Merriam Company's own 1847 edition expired as well. Some publishers began selling their own editions of these books once they were in the public domain. Others were calling their own books "Webster's Dictionary." To distinguish its dictionary--the direct descendant of Noah Webster--G. & C. Merriam gave its 1890 edition a new title: Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language. The new title was the first time that the Merriam Company had used the "Webster" name directly in the book's title; it also reflected the growing status of English as a global language and the United States' growing awareness of itself as a world power. The new book had grown since the 1864 edition, from 56,000 entries to more than 175,000.
Competition with other publishers to produce the best and biggest unabridged dictionary continued apace through the early years of the century. New editions of the unabridged dictionary appeared regularly. Webster's New International Dictionary was published in 1909. Twenty-five years later, after working through the hardest years of the Great Depression, Merriam published Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition. Including expanded front and back matter, color plates, maps, and geographical and biographical sections, it was an enormous book that had been as difficult to manufacture as it was unwieldy to use. It nonetheless maintained Merriam's exacting attention to lexicographical accuracy. While the dictionary grew in size, the G. & C. Merriam facilities in Springfield were becoming more and more crowded. In the early 1930s planning was begun for a new building. It was completed in 1939 with an entire floor given over to the editorial department. The building continued to serve as Merriam-Webster's headquarters in 2005.
Merriam-Webster sold its first electronic products in the 1960s when it leased its typesetting tapes to linguists for research purposes. Its first true electronic consumer products had to wait until the 1980s. Then, in conjunction with Franklin Electronic Publishers, Merriam-Webster produced handheld electronic spellcheckers and, later, handheld dictionaries that looked like calculators, except they had miniature typewriter keyboards instead of numeric pads.
In 1995 Merriam-Webster introduced the first electronic product of its own, the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Deluxe Electronic Edition for CD-ROM. That same year the company established its first online presence at America Online under the AOL keyword MERRIAM.
By then work had already begun on the company's own web site. Launched in 1996 under the name Merriam Webster Online, the site took the bold step of offering visitors unlimited free access to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. There were several reasons for the move. First, the company saw the online dictionary as a tremendous vehicle to promote the Merriam-Webster brand. For decades the company had struggled to link the names "Merriam" and "Webster" in the public consciousness. By the late 1990s the site was getting more than ten million page views every month--a number that had grown to more than 100 million monthly page views by the 2000s--and every visitor saw plainly they were using a Merriam-Webster dictionary. The strengthened brand awareness carried over to the sale of print dictionaries, which by 2003 had increased 17 percent. Moreover, the company was convinced that while dictionaries in various electronic formats, especially Web-based, might never fully replace print dictionaries, they would be an important means of dictionary use in the future. Finally, Merriam-Webster realized that to keep hold of its leadership in dictionary publishing, its dictionaries had to be accepted as the standard by which dictionaries were measured. To prevail as the country's standard it had to be online as well as in print. To surrender the Internet to another dictionary was to concede that Merriam-Webster's product was not the standard there.
Moving into the latter half of the 2000s, Merriam-Webster anticipated increased use of its products electronically, not only online, but also in PDAs, cell phones, e-book readers, and other devices. Coupled as it is with the ongoing promotion of the Merriam-Webster brand, the company expected use of the electronic products to lead to further growth in sales of the print products as well. The company also anticipated an expansion into the world market, with dictionaries for individuals learning English as a second language. By 2000 English had become the Lingua Franca of world commerce and education. Approximately one billion people were learning the language every day, a fact British dictionary publishers had long known. A successful entry into this market would bode well for Merriam-Webster in the coming decades.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/company
Merriam-Webster company is still located in Springfield, Massachusetts
47 Federal Street 01085.
(413) 732-2978.
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