CHAPTER XII

STENOGRAPHY AND THE TYPEWRITER

It is difficult to see how man could now dispense with any of the great inventions and discoveries that give him power over time and space. Not one of them could be sacrificed without corresponding loss of power. Among the great devices that economize time are stenography and the typewriter. Stenography is the world's business alphabet; the typewriter, its commercial printing press.

The word _stenography_ is derived from the Greek adjective _stenos_ meaning "narrow" or "close," and the Greek verb _graphein_ signifying "to write." Stenography, therefore, is the art of close or narrow writing, so named, perhaps, from the great amount of meaning that by its use is packed into a narrow compass. It is a phonetic system in which brief signs are used to represent single sounds, groups of sounds, whole words, or groups of words.

The idea of stenography or shorthand writing originated in ancient times. Antiquarians have tried to show, with more or less plausibility, that it was practised more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ by the Persians, Egyptians, and Hebrews. Abbreviated writing, for taking down lectures and preserving poems recited at the Olympic and other games, was used by the Greeks. The first known practitioner of the art of shorthand writing was Tiro, who lived in Rome 63 B.C., and who was the stenographer of the great orator Cicero. He took down in shorthand the speeches of his master, by whom they were afterward revised. Plutarch says that when the Roman Senate was voting on the charge which Cicero had preferred against Catiline, Cicero distributed shorthand reporters throughout the Senate House for the purpose of taking down the speeches of some of the leading Senators. At the close of St. Paul's letter to the Colossians there is a note to the effect that the Epistle was written from Rome by Tychicus and Onesimus. It has been supposed that Tychicus acted as shorthand writer and Onesimus as transcriber. Certain it is that the early Christian fathers employed a system of shorthand writing. Saint Augustine refers to a church meeting held at Carthage in the fourth century of the Christian era, at which eight shorthand writers were employed, two working at a time. Charlemagne, the great king of the Franks, who died in 814 A.D., delved deep into the art of shorthand writing as practised by Tiro, Cicero's stenographer.

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