LAKE PLACID, Fla., Dec. 26 (AP)--Dr. Melvil Dewey, internationally known educator, inventor of the decimal classification system used in libraries, and spelling reform advocate, died here today of a cerebral hemorrhage. He celebrated his eightieth birthday on Dec. 10. His wife was with him at his death. A son, Dr. Godfrey Dewey of New York, also survives. Dr. Dewey came to Florida in 1926 and established a southern branch of the famous Lake Placid Club of New York, of which he was the founder. Dr. Dewey as a boy split wood, pastured cows and did other chores for the pennies and nickels offered by farmers. The meagre earnings he saved, until he had enough for an unabridged dictionary, and he walked ten miles to Watertown, N.Y. to buy it. Before he was 15 he gave up his intention to enter the ministry, in order to devote himself to popular education. This ambition led him to devise the Dewey decimal system of library classification, which carried his name throughout the world, and to battle for the metric system of weights and measures and for simplified spelling. Then it made him head of the University of the State of New York, and finally took him into an entirely different field, with the establishment of the Lake Placid club as a resort for workers in education. Dr. Dewey had a passion for efficiency, for time and labor saving methods. He was born at Adams Centre, Jefferson County, N.Y. on Dec. 10, 1851. He was graduated from Amherst College in 1874 and received a Master's degree there in 1877. While in college he was honorary assistant in the library, desiring to learn its technique. He decided that much could be done in education by building up the library systems and set about to apply his ideas. The college library drifted into his management, and at the end of his junior year he was asked by the trustees to become acting librarian. It was here that he developed the system of classifying and cataloguing books by decimal numbers, a system now known by his name and used in practically all libraries in this country. In 1876 Dr. Dewey left Amherst for Boston, where he started and managed organizations to further the three "simplifying" causes he was urging. These were the American Library Association, the American Metric Bureau and the Spelling Reform Association. Library work claimed most of his attention, and he started The Library Journal to publicize his library movement, and the Library Bureau to sell the necessities for library catalogues. Nearly fifty years later the bureau was sold for several million dollars, but Dr. Dewey said he received little of this, as he had disposed of his stock a little at a time to pull the Lake Placid Club through its early years. Dr. Dewey had these projects well under way by 1883. For the next five years he was chief librarian at Columbia University. All of its libraries were combined under his direction, and he added more books than in the previous 130 years of the university's history, incorporating his ideas of library management, starting free lectures, and opening the library to women. At Columbia Dr. Dewey started his library school, which he took with him to Albany when he became secretary and executive officer of the University of the State of New York in 1889. When he went to Albany, he said later, he was as welcome among the politicians there "as a thorn would be in a sore thumb." They vowed to be rid of him in a year, but he stayed seventeen--until 1900--as secretary of the State University and until 1906 as director of the State Library and Library School. In the meantime, Dr. Dewey had founded in 1895 the Lake Placid Club at Lake Placid, N.Y. He and his wife had been searching for a resort where they might be free from hay fever and rose colds, and at Lake Placid they found it. "We wanted to devote our lives to the cause of education," he explained later, "and one way of doing this was to help the educators. If we could give them an opportunity to find health, strength and inspiration at moderate cost, we knew we would be helping them." So he bought land and started the club, despite the scorn heaped upon "that darned literary fellow" who thought he could run a Summer resort with no bar, no cigar stand, no gambling and no late hours. Instead of going broke, he built up an institution with 1,500 guests in Summer and 1,200 in Winter, 390 buildings and forty-three farms, a general store, a library of 10,000 volumes, sport facilities for all and a reputation as the centre of Winter sports in America. When he first provided rooms for guests for Winter sports, he was thought crazy. Dr. Dewey and his son, Godfrey, had been active in arranging the Winter Olympics, which will take place at Lake Placid in February. Dr. Dewey was chairman of the New York State Winter Olympics Committee. Even as a club manager, Dr. Dewey retained his earlier enthusiasms, and his club guests read their menus in simplified spelling and wrote their meal orders because Dr. Dewey found that this reduced food bills by $50,000 a year. In 1926 Dr. Dewey went South and started a branch of his club at Lake Placid, Fla. The club eventually went beyond its original purpose, and many wealthy persons became members, but rates were varied to suit the purses of those of smaller means. He founded also the Lake Placid Club Education Foundation in 1922 and the Adirondack Music Festival in 1925. He was a trustee of the Chautauqua Institution. Dr. Dewey married twice. In 1878 he married Annie R. Godfrey of Milford, Mass., and in 1924 Mrs. Emily McKay Beal, vice president and manager of the Lake Placid Club.