Noah Webster is often credited with single-handedly changing American spelling, particularly through his dictionaries: “The American Spelling Book” (first published in 1788, although it ran to at least 300 editions over the period between 1788 and 1829, and became probably the best selling book in American history after “The Bible”), “The Compendious Dictionary of the English Language” (1806),
and “The American Dictionary of the English Language” (1828).