"Eureka!" Dewey did it: his system helps you every time you go to the library.

Like other boys growing up in the 1860s, twelve-year-old Melville Dewey attended school and worked to earn money. He tended cows and split wood. He also hauled gravel, carried goods from the train depot, and helped in his father's store. For his long hours of work, Dewey earned a nickel or a few pennies.

000 Generalities

Unlike other boys, Dewey did not buy peppermint sticks or toys with his earnings. Instead, he saved his money until he had about ten dollars. Then he walked, carrying his heavy bag of coins, to the closest city, eleven miles away. He went to the bookstore and asked for the one thing he wanted most: Webster's unabridged dictionary.

100 Philosophy

After buying the book, Dewey discovered it was too heavy to carry home. He had to pay thirty cents to ride the train. It upset him greatly. He hated to waste money, but he loved that book.

200 Religion

Later, when Dewey was a teacher, he gave unabridged dictionaries as gifts to his students. He had several of the huge books in his house and would often jump up to look up a word's meaning or pronunciation.

Dewey loved to study and examine things, including himself. On his fifteenth birthday he wrote in his diary: "I have been weighing and measuring myself this afternoon and find that I weigh one hundred twenty-five pounds and am five feet and five and a fourth inches in height. In looking over my small stock of worldly goods I find that I am worth the delightfully small sum of one hundred twenty-five dollars."

300 Social Sciences

After many days of thinking, Dewey decided what he wanted to do when he grew up. He wanted to leave the world a better place by correcting mistakes and changing bad habits. Reform became his life's work. To remind himself of his goal, Dewey bought a pair of cufflinks marked with an R.

400 Languages

Dewey worked to reform anything that wasted time. And spelling wasted time. He hated to see people learning and writing unnecessary letters. He suggested that people use simpler spellings and write school as skool, honey as huni, and through as thru. He even simplified his own name. Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey became Melvil Dui for a while, then finally Melvil Dewey.

Dewey also believed in the need to change to the metric system of weights and measures, the need for outdoor exercise, and the constant need for education, even for adults. He often said, "When a tree ceases to grow, it begins to rot."

500 Pure Sciences

Dewey's love of books grew and grew. One day when a fire started in his classroom, Dewey tried to save the books. He gathered as many as he could carry while smoke filled the building. Although he escaped, he inhaled so much smoke that doctors predicted he would not live more than two years.

But Dewey recovered and went on to achieve great success--with books, of course. It started when he walked into the library at Amherst College. He saw room after room filled with shelves of books. But the books were arranged by color and size. There was no card catalog. Dewey had to ask the librarian to search the shelves for the book he wanted. Often, he had to wait hours for the book to be found.

600 Applied Sciences and Technology

This upset Dewey. He thought that finding a book in a library should be easy and fast. "What ought to be, can be" was his motto. For months he dreamed night and day that there must be a solution.

Then, one Sunday during a long sermon, it came to him. "I jumped in my seat," Dewey recalled, "and came near to shouting `Eureka! Use decimals.'"

700 Arts

His idea was to number books according to what they were about. He divided books into ten main categories. Each of those categories was split into ten categories and so on. Now books about the same subject would be close to each other on the library shelf.

In 1876, Dewey published his idea, called the Dewey Decimal System of Classification. The word "decimal" means the system is based on the number ten.

800 Literature

Libraries throughout the world quickly began using the Dewey Decimal System. Today, it has been translated into more than thirty languages and is used in more than one hundred countries. Most likely, your school and public libraries file books according to this system. Even the World Wide Web uses the Dewey Decimal System to organize information.

900 History and Geography

Want to know more about Melvil Dewey? Go to the library and look for him under 020.92.