John morse biography merriam webster

John arrived at Merriam-ster's Springfield offices in December of , having been hired by Editor-in-Chief Fred Mish for a position that..

Here's the story of George and Charles Merriam, the brothers who took ster's work and brought it to the world stage.

John Morse Biography: Mr. Morse became President of Merriam-ster, Inc. in This was the culmination of over 20 years of combined work experience at.

John arrived at Merriam-ster's Springfield offices in December of , having been hired by Editor-in-Chief Fred Mish for a position that.

John Morse used to say the work itself was the mental equivalent of taking a standardized test.

In , John Morse, the company's president at the time, decided to put the Collegiate Dictionary online for free.

Electronic and print publishing come down essentially to the same thing for John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster. "We're in the business of delivering information about the English language to users," he says.

"Historically we've done it in print, and print will predominate for years to come, but we also provide information electronically."

M-W produced its first electronic product, an abridged dictionary, at the end of 1986-a small, single-purpose, handheld device about 3 1/2x5 1/2 inches.

"It had a little screen that only displayed about three lines of text, so by today's standards it was fairly crude," recalls Morse, "but it was a start." In 1989, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary appeared in CD-ROM format.

Morse concedes that the latter "has not been a huge commercial success. There's a strong preference on the part of customers to use a print dictionary, which is a wonderfully well-engineered product in itself."

M-W has instead developed multiple