Hmm

... with Christmas.

In 1874, Macy's installs this enormous Christmas window display with thousands of dollars worth of decorations.

Apparently, most of it is porcelain dolls, which is a little creepy.

But then other stores start copying Macy's.

They do their own big window displays, and then these windows kind of become attractions in themselves.

They're like the opening curtain of the theater production, or, or they're, they're the theater production in itself.

[laughs]

Greek or Hebrew, like as a sort of artificially imposed languages in America that people, maybe not many people, but some people took that very seriously.

Very true.

I mean, Hebrew was posed as this way to identify America as this chosen people because they saw themselves as a shining city upon a hill.

It was their destiny to evolve out of England and to evolve into the scientific enlightenment world.

And it was suggested that Hebrew could be one of those binding languages that brings us together and separates us from our oppressor.

Obviously, you can imagine the hassle this would be to suddenly convert an entire country to speaking and writing this way.

So obviously that wasn't taken as seriously as...

it doesn't have any

[laughs]

Noah Webster didn't.

Um, and that, that's just his personality, but his, his proposal for spelling reform in 1789, this is the, the birth of the American Republic, and all the Founding Fathers are trying to figure out ways to distinguish American culture, identity, and language from that of its former oppressor, England.

So, there were, um, discussions about what our new language would be.

Some people posed French would be the new American language.

Other people said Greek.

And Noah Webster comes along and he says, "We can continue to have English, but we'll write in an American English, and this American English will be simplified.

... you put it in the book.

Yeah.

Oh.

[laughs] All right, so this is the 1870s now.

Spelling bees are becoming very popular, not just as this classroom exercise, but now as entertainment, and regional entertainment, and leisure activities in mining towns.

And they are becoming more popular as these, mm, I don't know if they're statewide yet, but definitely citywide competitions.

And this is basically around the time that spelling bees start to collide with something called the simplified spelling movement.

And anyone who's read my book knows that I'm absolutely obsessed with this movement.

'Cause they weren't busy.

Oh, boy.

...

this is his process.

He starts working 1746.

He starts by taking a book off his shelf and he underlines all the words and quotations that he wants to include in his dictionary.

Then he passes the book to an assistant to transcribe his selections onto paper cards, which Johnson later alphabetizes and then defines.

Then he continues on to another book and another.

Mm-hmm.

And so, if there's, if there's no payoff, then there's no payoff.

There were profit values.

There were profit motives for this, specifically among businessmen in the late 1800s.

They viewed simplified spelling as something that would increase productivity and efficiency in their workforce.

Let's say you were a, um...

You owned a publishing company or a newspaper or even a factory, you would look at simplified spelling and see it as a way to save time, save money because these words are shorter to write.

You would save ink.

But in texting, it's completely acceptable.