CONTENTS. Letter of the Commissioner of Education to the Secretary of the Interior...... Chronological list of English and American authors of systems and text LETTER. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., February 26, 1884. SIR: This Office, in endeavoring to meet the enormous demand for information on the general lines of educational work, has been able only occasionally and to a limited extent to follow up various specialties of great importance in themselves and having vital bearings upon our progress in education. Among the specialties not considered as I have desired in the past has been instruction in shorthand. The Office has received and preserved all data respecting this subject coming to it in the usual course of the discharge of its duties and as far as possible has answered specific inquiries, but the growth of interest in shorthand and the great demands for information touching it led me to commit a special inquiry into the condition and progress of its instruction to the stenographer of the Bureau, Mr. Julius Ensign Rockwell. He has very effectively used the facilities of the Office in gathering from a vast and surprising variety of sources the data now available showing the history and condition of education in this specialty. In his devotion to the subject, it should in justice be said, he has performed a large share of this work out of office hours and, as in all such cases, without additional compensation. Among the items of extra-official work, I should specially mention the exhaustive bibliography of works on shorthand in the English language as entirely prepared out of office hours and at considerable uncompensated personal expense. The economic value of stenography is already abundantly illustrated in connection with congressional and all other legislative work in the country, the administration of our national, State, and municipal courts, and in the conduct of all extensive correspondence, whether official or private. The demand for this clerical qualification has greatly increased within a few years. Our educators and all others interested in meeting this demand specially need the valuable and instructive facts contained in the accompanying manuscript, and I therefore recommend its publication as a circular of information. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, The Hon. SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. Publication approved. H. M. TELLER, Secretary. THE TEACHING, PRACTICE, AND LITERATURE OF SHORTHAND. SHORTHAND SYSTEMS. Although some forms of abbreviated or word writing were undoubtedly practised in the earliest times among the Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks, yet no positive proof of the existence of a true system of shorthand is found previous to the year 60 B. C. At that time Marcus Tullius Tiro, the freedman, namesake, and friend of Cicero, invented a system of "notæ," which, with various additions by Seneca and others, was commonly taught in schools, became a part of the education of emperors, and was extensively practised for several centuries. Owing to the general use of wax tablets among the early Romans, our knowl edge of the system is mainly derived from manuscripts written after its popularity had declined. The characters, derived from the letters of the alphabet and variously modified to represent words, were numbered by thousands. Through the Middle Ages the art seems to have been entirely neglected. Modern shorthand dates from the revival of learning in the reign of Elizabeth, "the Augustan age of literature," as it has been aptly termed, when Dr. Timothe Bright, once rector of Methley, in Yorkshire, and the author of several medical and other works,1 issued a small treatise on the subject, entitled "Characterie An Arte of shorte, swifte, and secrete writing by Character Inuented by Timothe Bright, Doctor of Phisike Imprinted at London by I. Windet, the Assigne of Tim. Bright, 1588 Cum priuilegio Regiae Maiestatis. Forbidding all other to print the same." This was dedicated "To the Most high and mightie Prince Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, of England, Fraunce, and Ireland, Queene, Defender of the Faith, &cc." "Cicero," he said, "did account it worthie his labor, and no less profitable to the Roman common weale (Most gratious Soueraigne) to inuent a speedie kinde of wryting by Character, as Plutarch reporteth in the life of Cato the yonger. This invention was increased afterwards by Seneca; that the number of characters grue to 7,000. Whether through iniurie of time, or that men gaue it over for tediousness of learning, nothing remaineth extant of Cicero's inuention at this day. Upon consideration of the great vse of such a kinde of writing, I haue inuented the like: of fewe Characters, short and easie, euery Character answering a word: My Inuention meere English, without precept, Hygieina; Medicine therapeuticæ pars, 1583; De dyscrasia corporis humani, London, 1583; In physicam G. A. Scribonii animadversiones, 1584; A treatise on melancholie, London, 1586; De sanitate tuenda et restituenda, 1588; An abridgement of the booke of Acts &c., London, 1589. Title, with other valuable data, courteously furnished by Edward B. Nicholson, esq. librarian of the Bodleian Library. |