WORCESTER, EDWARD SOMERSET, second Marquis of (1601-67). An English nobleman and inventor, the son of the first Marquis of Somer set. In early life he devoted himself to mathe matical and mechanical researches. In 1641 he entered the service of Charles L, who, in 1645, sent him to treat secretly with the Irish Catholics and to raise troops for service in England. The secret was discovered, Worcester was imprisoned on the charge of treason. and Charles I. disowned him. After his release Worcester spent four years in voluntary exile, and upon his return to England in 1652 was imprisoned in the Tower until 1654. Worcester wrote A Century of the Names and Scantlings of Snell Inventions as at Present I Can Call to Mind to hare Tried and Perfected (1663), in which he described a steam engine as an admirable and most forcible ma chine for "driving up water by fire." Though he is known to have erected great water-works at Vauxhall. there is no proof that he constructed the engine described above. Consult Dircks, The Life. Times, and Scientific Labors of the Second Marquis of Worcester, with an annotated reprint of his C'entury of Inventions (1865).
WORCESTER„IosEnt EMERSON ( 1 734 -1865). An American lexicographer and pedagogical writer. born at Bedford, N. H. A graduate of Yale (1811), he taught at Salem, and after a brief stay at Andover moved to Cambridge 118191. where he devoted himself to study
and writing till his death. He had already published a Geographical Dictionary (1817, enlarged 1823), and a Gazetteer of the United 'States (1818). At Cambridge he produced in rapid succession a number of text books in history and geography. He began his work in lexicography in 1828 by an edition of John son's Dictionary and an abridgment of Web ster's American Dictionary (1829). In 1830 he published a Comprehensive Pronouncing and Ex planatory English Dictionary. From 1831 to 1843 he edited The American. Almanac. In 1846 he issued A Universal and Critical Dictionary, and after a suspension of his labors, owing to failure of his eyes (1847-49). repeatedly en lar2ed this until it became the great quarto Dictionary of the English Language (1800), the first illustrated dictionary in English. Wor cester's various dictionaries were the first in America to take an objective rather than a didactic position toward the language. In con trast especially to the work of Webster. they sought to represent the language as it was rather than to mold it in special forms. An enlarged edition of the quarto Dictionary appeared in 1881. In method it has been the model for many successors.