11 May 2021 - ISAAC PITMAN - SHORTHAND INVENTOR

 

 ISAAC PITMAN 

- SHORTHAND INVENTOR -

G'day folks,

Today, many young people would have no idea what shorthand is.

January 22, 1897 — Isaac Pitman died on this day, leaving behind the shorthand note-taking system named after him, which became the most widely used in the English-speaking world. It continues to flourish despite astonishing advances in technology which would have been expected to render Pitman Shorthand obsolete.

Pitman was born in 1813, the third of his parents’ 11 children. His father, Samuel, was the manager of a weaving mill. Isaac went to a grammar school but left at the age of 13 because of health problems. He suffered with speech difficulties and the crowded classrooms frequently caused him to have fainting fits.

He took a job as a clerk at a textile mill but refused to give up his education and studied at home. It wasn’t long before he enrolled at a teacher’s training college, paving the way for an 11-year stint as a teacher at local schools.

While teaching English, he became fascinated by spelling and felt it needed reform. This led to his creation of Pitman Shorthand, a system of rapid writing based on the sounds of words – the phonetic principle – rather than on conventional spelling. It was all explained in a book, Stenographic Sound Hand, published in 1837.

Until his death at the age of 84, he continued to improve the system through twelve editions. He also established a phonetic institute and a phonetic journal to publicise it.

Not content with all that, Pitman also printed standard works in shorthand, and his book Phonography (1840) was published in many editions. The system quickly became widely popular and commercially successful.

Pitman shorthand was introduced into the United States in 1852. Among the many languages to which it has been adapted are Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, German, French, Spanish, and Dutch.

In 1886 – eight years before he was knighted by Queen Victoria for his shorthand work – Pitman went into formal partnership with his sons Alfred and Ernest. Isaac Pitman and Sons was to become one of the world's leading educational publishers and training businesses.

Now trading as Pitman Training, it continues to thrive from its base at Wetherby in Yorkshire. In 2013 it was recognised as a Superbrand in the prestigious league table that charts the UK’s strongest brands. Surprisingly perhaps, this put Pitman alongside such giants as Apple, Google and British Airways.

The company offers 250 courses and qualifications across a range of sectors including office, secretarial, book-keeping, web design and marketing. Teaching methods include audio, books and software.

As well as training centres in London, New York, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Toronto and Tokyo, it has 57 of them in the UK, 14 in Ireland, and others in Spain, Palestine, Romania, Kuwait, Ireland, Nigeria, Cayman Island, Zimbabwe and India.

But in this age of rapidly developing technology is there a future for shorthand? One blogger recently wrote: “As recording technology and voice recognition become more reliable, shorthand will be needed less and less. Laws will be changed to recognise recordings.

“Some reporters still find it useful, but most now use a recorder. In the UK, reporters still need shorthand at 100 words a minute, but there is increasing pressure to drop the requirement.”

However, former London newspaper executive Graham Dudman wrote in 2015: “The armoury of tools used by reporters to create journalism is changing as never before. Periscope, Instagram, Twitter … the list goes on.

“But among the all-singing, all-dancing hi-tech digital tricks and toys there is one old-fashioned tool still standing head and shoulders above the rest: shorthand. It has been top dog for decades and should remain so for decades to come.

“In my book, a reporter isn’t the finished article until they’ve passed their NCTJ [National Council for the Training of Journalists] shorthand at 100 words a minute.

“Why? Because the ability to write down what somebody says at the same time they’re saying it, then read your note back instantly is essential to do the job properly. Shorthand is a brilliant skill no digital trickery can match.”

You can almost hear applause from the ghost of Isaac Pitman.

 

Clancy's comment: I admire anyone who uses, or did use, shorthand.

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5 December 2020 - INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ANCIENT EGYPT

 

 

 

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT

 ANCIENT EGYPT

 

G'day folks,

 

Ancient Egypt is one of the most outstanding and extraordinary civilizations to have ever existed on Earth. 

Thanks to the abundance of records and relics, many of which continue emerging to this day, we’re lucky to know so much about this ancient culture, their history, and even everyday life.

Here, we venture beyond the usual facts about the pyramids and Tutankhamen and share some equally fascinating facts and misconceptions about Ancient Egypt and its population. Did you know, for example, that ancient Egyptians didn’t ride camels and didn’t have money? Or that Cleopatra was likely not as beautiful as rumoured.

 MUMMIES 

 

 Mummification was a common practice in many civilizations, but it was the ancient Egyptians that turned it into a whole science. Turning a body into a mummy was a long, arduous and very expensive process that only the privileged classes could afford. The majority of people, on the other hand, were simply buried in the desert. This is somewhat problematic, as the ancient Egyptians believed that a person will be able to live in the afterlife only if their body is preserved. But wouldn’t that mean that by reserving mummification only to the rich the simple folk would be denied a life after death? We will probably never know the answer to that question, but archaeologists do point out that, somewhat ironically, the hot desert sands were, in many cases, better at preserving the body than a sarcophagus placed in a cold and mouldy tomb.

 WRITING

 

 

Hieroglyphics is a writing system that can be found in many Ancient Egyptian temples, tombs and, of course, the pyramids, but it turns out that it wasn’t the main way of recording things. This is because hieroglyphs are pictograms, meaning that they are a series of small pictures that form sentences when combined in various ways. You can imagine that inscribing each picture, not to mention a whole text, in this fashion is extremely time-consuming and not very practical. This is why this beautiful pictographic writing system was reserved for historical writing, religious and burial-related texts only, and more mundane matters like trade documents were written in a simplified form of hieroglyphics called hieratic. With time, they simplified the script even more into the so-called demotic writing. All three of these writing systems were used to record the same spoken language, although few people could actually read in Ancient Egypt (over 90% of the population was illiterate).

CLOTHING

 

Many ancient Egyptian customs and customary clothing, in particular, are explained in ancient Egyptian or other historical accounts, but we still don’t know why most pharaohs, even the women, wore false beards. The first pharaoh who wore this type of regalia was Pharaoh Djoser in 27 century B.C., and all subsequent rulers were portrayed in this fashion. Even Pharaoh Hatshepsut, one of the most prominent female rulers of ancient Egypt, often appears with a fake beard. To this day, we’re not sure why this is the case, but it is speculated that the pharaoh’s “uniform”, beard included, signified their connection to the Gods, and this was a big deal, as pharaohs were considered the embodiment of the god Horus and they typically tried to single themselves out of the crowd in any way they could.

Clancy's comment: What an amazing civilization.

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