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Authoritative: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.320.5875.446a   (Publisher's PDF... likely be available here.)

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Introduction

While Noah Webster may have produced the earliest compendium on American English, the divergence from British English dates from much earlier. Long before the publication of Webster's Dictionary in 1806, pronunciation in America and in Britain had begun to differ (1, 2). The Dictionary thus does not mark a fixed point when all Americans shifted abruptly from British to American English. The speciation, rather, was gradual, because individual speakers change gradually, by increments, in their lifetimes; individual changes also spread gradually from speaker to speaker.

@article{joseph08parsingEvoLangSCIENCE,
  author={Brian D. Joseph and Salikoko S. Mufwene and Quentin D. Atkinson and Andrew Meade and Chris Venditti and Simon J. Greenhill and Mark Pagel},
  title={Parsing the Evolution of Language},
  journal={Science},
  year={2008},
  month={April},
  volume={320},
  number={5875},
  pages={446},
  doi={10.1126/science.320.5875.446a},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/joseph08parsingEvoLangSCIENCE.html}
}