Historical Figure
Alfred Mosher Butts
1899–1993
American architect who invented Scrabble (1899–1993)
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Biography
Alfred Mosher Butts was an American architect, famous for inventing the board game Scrabble in 1931.
Timeline
The story of Alfred Mosher Butts, told in moments.
Invented a word game called "Lexiko" after losing his architecture job in the Depression. He analyzed the front page of The New York Times to calculate letter frequency and assign point values.
James Brunot bought the rights to Butts's game, renamed it "Scrabble," and manufactured it in an abandoned schoolhouse. Butts received a royalty of about 3 cents per set sold.
Died nine days before his 94th birthday. Scrabble was in one out of three American homes. Six of his drawings had been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Artifacts (15)
History of Green County, Wisconsin (IA historyofgreenco00unio)
Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog]
Books from the Library of Congress (IA homebookofversea01stev)
Stevenson, Burton Egbert, 1872- [from old catalog] comp
Cornell University Library digitization (IA cu31924029475351)
Miller, James Alexander, 1864-
The home book of verse, American and English, 1580-1918 (IA homebookofversea00stev)
Stevenson, Burton Egbert, 1872- [from old catalog] comp
History of the Georgia Woman's Christian temperance union from its organization, 1883-1907. (IA historyofgeorgia01ansl)
Ansley, Lula Barnes, 1861-
Annual report of the Babies' Hospital of the City of New York. (IA annualreportofba5354babi)
Babies Hospital (New York, N.Y.)
Annual report of the town offices of Fairhaven, Massachusetts (IA annualreportofto1882fair)
Fairhaven (Mass.)
the most dangerous man in the United States
riggs; Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman; and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, who, Hoover maintained, was "the most dangerous man in the United States". In 1920, at D.C.'s Federal...
This job ... trained me in the value of collating material. It gave me an excell...
alf mile from his house. The experience shaped both Hoover and the creation of the FBI profiles; as Hoover observed in a 1951 letter, "This job ... trained me in the value of collating material. It...
Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. Holt Rinehart and Winston
"J. Edgar Hoover on the FBI". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online ed.). Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc
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