and a larger output of books.
The same applies to most technological advances. If Charlemagne
could have commissioned a telephone, what could he have done with
it? He could not have set up a hotline to Haroon al Rashid without the
support of hundreds of thousands of telephone users and thousands of
workers who could set up and operate telephone networks.

Since the 15th century, refinements have continued along
similar lines. By the 16th century, savants in England and France
were clamoring for standardized orthography. Since English and
French are essentially creoles, spelling was considerably more
confusing than for languages such as Italian that followed a different
evolutionary path. This reform went over somewhat better in France
than in England, and since it was conducted in part by scholar-
printer-publishers, it is one of the reasons why French continues to use
diacriticalmarkings. But serious standardization had to wait for
ideological and technical changes before becoming absolute. After the
U.S war for independence, the puritan element in the U.S. found an
outlet for its need to control every detail of life in figures like Noah
Webster, who equated standardization with moral probity, and saw
correct spelling as next to Godliness. The need to repress unruliness of
any sort runs under the surface of Webster's spelling bees and related
activities, and forms part of the basis for the regimentation, and hence
cost efficiency, of mass education. This kind of regimentation and
quashing of individuality played a crucial role in creating the
industrial workforce of 19th century America. The task of breaking
the spirits of agrarian workers so they could make efficient factory
drones had to come in the guise of education, and, since