The Simplified Spelling Board was announced on March 11, 1906, with Andrew Carnegie funding the organization, to be headquartered in New York City.
The New York Times noted that Carnegie was convinced that "English might be made the world language of the future" and an influence leading to universal peace, but that this role was obstructed by its "contradictory and difficult spelling".
[2] The initial 30 members of the Board consisted of authors, professors, and dictionary editors, among them Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer, President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, Melvil Dewey (inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification), Isaac K. Funk (editor of The Standard Dictionary), former United States Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, United States Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris (and editor-in-chief of the 1909 Webster's New International Dictionary), publishing magnate Henry Holt, professor Calvin Thomas, and author Mark Twain.
[1] Offices were obtained at the Metropolitan Life Building at 1 Madison Avenue, and Brander Matthews was selected as the board's chairman.
[8] The board noted that the majority of the words in their list were already preferred by three current dictionaries: Webster's (more than half), the Century (60%) and the Standard (two-thirds).
[10] In August 1906, President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt had supported the plan, signing an executive order at his home in Oyster Bay, New York, mandating the use of reformed spelling in his official communications and messages to Congress.
"[14] Overseas, while the London press viciously mocked the executive order, the board received a significant spike in interest in the word list following Roosevelt's edict.
[15] In response to mounting criticism from British newspapers, the board announced the additions of James Murray, the Scottish lexicographer and primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, along with Joseph Wright, an Oxford University professor of comparative philology and editor of the English Dialect Dictionary.
Brander Matthews, a friend of Roosevelt and one of the chief advocates of the reform as chairman of the Simplified Spelling Board, remonstrated with him for abandoning the effort.
Next summer Roosevelt was watching a naval review when a press boat marked "Pres Bot" chugged ostentatiously by.
"[19] Carnegie was further irritated to learn that his own trusts' annual financial reports were seen to be taking "a step backwards in reference to spelling."
[...] Instead of taking twelve words and urging their adoption, they undertook radical changes from the start and these they can never make ...." Using spelling that demonstrated his own continuing attachment to certain reforms, Carnegie added, "I think I hav been patient long enuf ...
"[19] It was always a condition that Carnegie's dollars had to be matched by results, and at his death in August 1919, his will contained no provision for the Simplified Spelling Board.
It noted that previous spelling changes had come into use gradually—"so gradually, in fact, that at all times (as today) ther hav been, and ar, many words speld in more than one way on equal authority of good usage".