Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/152

* SHORTHAND. 118 SHORTHAND. the twelve vowel sounds and the thirty diph- thongs, all being distinct; and he gave the shorter and more common words three positions ■with respect to the line of writing, so that, with- out impairing legibility, these vowel forms might be dispensed with in ordinary eases. Tables II. and III. illustrate most of these points. The public were so captivated with the new system that nine editions of the book, each with improvements, were demanded within fifteen years: and although some one hundred systems have been put on the market in Great IJritain since the first appearance of the Isaac Pitman system, it has continued to gain ground very rap- idly among them all. An "officiar report made by Mr. Storr of the Times (London) gives the rela- tive standing of the systems used in the British Parliament in 1895 as: Isaac Pitman, 96; Gur- ney, 10; Taylor, 11: Janes, I: Duployan, 1; Lewis, 2. The popularity of the system is also shown by the large amount of shorthand litera- ture published: Two weekly periodicals with a circulation stated to be 35,000 each, from the Bath press; six monthlies of a general character pub- lished independently, and one medical journal — all of these in shorthand alone, except The Phonetic Journal, which is partly letterpress. Table III. ^ ^ 925,000 ■ ::n^. "-^ ^ :s,_ ^^. .U ^ ],'. [ -v- - —^, ' " If I were fifteen years old again, and wanted to earn $25,000 a year in some great business by the time I was thirty, 1 would study to become a good amanuensis, and get into the Manager's office as a stenographer. There is no quicker, easier way to 'burglarize' success."— Frrt^cr/c Irland, Congressional Reporter, Washington, D.C. The catalogue of publications now issued through the four publishing houses at Bath, London, New York, and Toronto contains, among other books, 136 of such standard character as the Bible. The Yiear of Wakefield, Tom Brotrn's School Daifs, Dickens's Pickwick Papers, etc. Government returns show that, in the year 1895, 91.000 youth were receiving instruction in the Pitman short- hand in the United Kingdom, and the text-books of the system have now be^n adopted exclusively for the schools of Greater New York. Isaac Pitman's services were recognized by having a knighthood conferred on him in 1893, three or four years before his death. In America there are no distinct traces of the public use of shorthand until Stephen Pearl An- drews brought the Isaac Pitman system from England in 1844, and planted it on this side of the Atlantic. In Dr. J. Westby-Gibson's Bibliog- raphy of Shorthand, he enumerates 16 editions of Andrews's and Boyle's Complete Plionographic Classbook (Pitman phonography) as published ■within eight years. Epinetus Webster also pub- lished an edition of the system in 1852. A very active propaganda was carried on at this time by these and other publishers, and by Oliver Dyer, who traveled over a large part of the Eastern and Northern States, and into Canada, lecturing on phonography and teaching large classes. In 1853 Benn Pitman, a younger brother of Isaac, came to -America, and, with R. B. Prosser, joined the propaganda by publishing The Reporter's Com- panion, and, shortly after. The Manual. So far, the system in America had kept pace in altera- tions with the several English editions; but a year or two later Andrew .J. Graham commenced his series of text-books, in which he introduced slight changes of his own. His alphabet, as also that of Benn Pitman, remains the same as the Isaac Pitman of 1856: but the latter undergoing a change in its tenth edition by the transposition of two light and two lieavy dot vowels, the Benn Pitman and the Graham did not follow; and that, with the change of the letters te, ij, and h, which Isaac Pitman made later, constitutes the prin- cipal difl'erence at the present day between these systems and that of Great Britain. Pitmanic Non-Pit man ic c ft) E £!; c E ioo CO TO II CD O CO E c ro c O' to DID 2- "1 ♦^ CO o of: ULlJ t Q> Q_ QJ CO >nOO o — Q. D bo QJ e)cj) c -C o ca ■o OJ c <" tD_ J2 W CD < -) -j Q T> fjy " p / o f f" B / S 1 /■ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 'cr^^ '- — D r 1 1 1 1 1 ^

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-^ H xtr^ ■^ ^ - / ■>^ ^^ ~1/ — oro .^ — /- W r ^ t^ "N -N - ' ( ■> Oor O Y ^ r << /^ r /- ~- ^ J H c-^ <f ?«;f <r- <r '-- o • • y C ,, — X ■ LJ In ISOO .James E. JIunson brought out liis Complete Phonographer, in which he adopted the Isaac Pitman change of vowels, but re- tained the old w and y. and he has a new- form of his own for /;. Elias Longley followed with his Eclcetie, and says, in his Introduction: "As phonography now stands before the public, in this country, it has no generally recognized exponent. It is 'Lo! here,' and "Lo! there,' and nobody knows who is the true phonographic