Isaac Pitman

Sir Isaac Pitman (January 4, 1813 – January 12, 1897), was a British phonographer, famous for developing the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman Shorthand. He was the grandfather of Sir James Pitman, famous for developing the Initial Teaching Alphabet.

Life

Isaac Pitman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire in England, the third of the eleven children of Samuel Pitman (1787–1863), manager of a weaving mill, and his wife, Maria Pitman, née Davis (1784–1854). He attended the local grammar school, but left it when he was 13 years old, due to his fragile health. He had great difficulty pronouncing words, and the overcrowded atmosphere in the classrooms caused Pitman’s frequent fainting fits.

Pitman however continued to study at his home, at the same time working as a clerk in a cloth factory. In 1931 he was sent to the Normal College of the British and Foreign School Society in London. From 1832 to 1839 he held masterships at Barton-on-Humber and Wotton-under-Edge.

At that time, Pitman was teaching Samuel Taylor's system of shorthand and was compiling a manual for its use. He offered the manual to his friend Samuel Bagster (1771-1852) to publish it, but Bagster turned it down and requested from Pitman to devise a new system, which would be simpler and more practical for use. That was the birth of Pitman’s shorthand, the work on which Pitman published in 1837 as Stenographic Soundhand. At Wotton-under-Edge, he soon started to teach his students the new shorthand system.

In 1839 Pitman became a Swedenborgian, joining the New Jerusalem Church. For this he was fired from his teaching post. In 1839 he opened his own private school at Bath and conducted it until 1843. During that time he devoted himself to perfecting his system and propagating its use. He founded at Bath a Phonetic Institute and a Phonetic Journal, which helped spread Pitman’s ideas. In 1840 he published a book Phonography, which went through numerous editions.

Pitman was a perfectionist, and continued to revise his system until his death. He subsequently published 12 editions of the system. In 1845 Pitman opened a new school in London, where he continued to teach shorthand.

Pitman was married twice. His first wife, Mary Holgate, whom he married in 1935, died in 1857, and he married again in 1861 to Isabella Masters. With Isabella he had two sons, Alfred and Ernest.

Pitman was the vice-president of the Vegetarian Society. He was knighted in 1894 by Queen Victoria for his contributions to shorthand.

Pitman died in Somerset, England, on January 12, 1897.

Work

Before he created his system, Pitman had used Samuel Taylor's system for seven years, but saw its weaknesses. Taylor’s symbols had greater similarity to the older Byrom system, and were too bulk and impractical to use. Pitman was asked to create a shorthand system of his own in 1837.

Pitman first presented his shorthand system in 1837 as Stenographic Soundhand. Like most systems of shorthand, it was a phonetic system based on phonetic rather than orthographic principles. The symbols did not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words were, for the most part, written as they were spoken. There were twenty-four consonants that could be represented in Pitman's shorthand, twelve vowels and four diphthongs. The consonants were indicated by strokes, the vowels by interposed dots.

Pitman used similar-looking symbols for phonetically related sounds. He was the first to use thickness of a stroke to indicate voicing (voiced consonants such as 'b' and 'd' were written with heavier lines than unvoiced ones such as 'p' and 't'), and consonants with similar place of articulation were orientated in similar directions, with straight lines for plosives and arcs for fricatives. For example, the dental and alveolar consonants were upright: "|" [t], "|" [d], ) [s], ")" [z], "(" [θ] (as in thigh), "(" [ð] (as in thy).

One characteristic feature of Pitman shorthand thus was that voiceless and voiced sounds (such as /p/ and /b/) were represented by strokes that differed only in thickness (the thick stroke representing the voiced consonant). Doing this required a writing instrument which was responsive to the user's drawing pressure: specialist fountain pens (with fine, flexible nibs) were originally used, but pencils are now more commonly used.

Another distinguishing feature was that there was more than one way of indicating vowels. The main vowel of a word or phrase was indicated by the position of the stroke with respect to the rules of the notebook. (For example, a small circle drawn above the line translated to as/has and the same circle drawn on the line translated to is/his.) However, there was a more straightforward way of indicating vowels, which was to use dots or small dashes drawn close to the stroke of the preceding consonant. The type of vowel was dependent on the relative position of the dot or dash to the stroke (beginning, middle, or end).

Another feature of Pitman's shorthand allowed most vowels to be omitted in order to speed up the process of writing. As mentioned above, each vowel was written next to the consonant stroke at the beginning, middle or end of the stroke. Pitman's shorthand was designed to be written on lined paper and when a word's first vowel is a "first position" vowel (i.e. it is written at the beginning of the stroke), the whole shorthand outline for the word was written above the paper's ruled line. When it was a second position vowel, the outline was written on the line. And when it was a third position vowel it was written through the line. In this way, the position of the outline indicated that the first vowel could only be one of four possibilities. In most cases, this meant that the first and often all the other vowels could be omitted entirely.

There are at least three "dialects" of Pitman's shorthand: the original Pitman's, Pitman's New Era, and Pitman's 2000. The later versions dropped certain symbols and introduced other simplifications to earlier versions. For example, strokes "rer" (heavy curved downstroke) and "kway," (hooked horizontal straight stroke) are present in Pitman's New Era, but not in Pitman's 2000.

Legacy

Pitman's brother Benn settled in Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States, and introduced Pitman's system there. He used it in the 1865–67 trial of the conspirators behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In Australia the system was introduced by another Pitman brother, Jacob.

At one time, Pitman was the most commonly used shorthand system in the entire English-speaking world. It had been adapted to at least 30 languages, including French, Spanish, Welsh, Afrikaans, Malay and Hindu. Part of its popularity was due to the fact that it was the first subject taught by correspondence course. Today in many regions (especially the U.S.), it has been superseded by Gregg Shorthand, developed by John Robert Gregg.

Publications

• Pitman, Isaac. 1837. Stenographic sound-hand. London: Samuel Bagster.
• Pitman, Isaac. 1840. Phonography, or, writing by sound: a natural method of writing all languages by one alphabet, composed of signs that represent the sounds of the human voice: adapted also to the English language as a complete system of short hand, briefer than any other system, and by which a speaker can be followed verbatim, without the use of arbitrary marks. London: Samuel Bagster and Sons
• Pitman, Isaac. 1845. A manual of phonography, or, Writing by sound a natural method of writing by signs that represent the sounds of language, and adapted to the English language as a complete system of phonetic short hand. London: S. Bagster and Sons.
• Pitman, Isaac. 1849. Exercises in phonography; designed to conduct the pupil to a practical acquaintance with the art. London: F. Pitman.
• Pitman, Isaac. 1860. The phonographic reader: a series of lessons in phonetic shorthand. London: F. Pitman.
• Pitman, Isaac. 1897. Key to exercises in the "Phonographic reporter;" or part II. of Pitman's shorthand instructor. London: I. Pitman & Sons
• Pitman, Isaac. 2003. Course in Isaac Pitman shorthand. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0766161692.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Baker, Alfred. 1908. The life of Sir Isaac Pitman (inventor of phonography). London: I. Pitman & Sons.
• Pitman, Benn. 1902. Sir Isaac Pitman, his life and labors. Cincinnati, OH: Press of C.J. Krehbial & Co.
• Sir Isaac Pitman. In Cotswold Edge <http://cotswoldedge.org.uk>. Retrieved on July 12, 2007, <http://cotswoldedge.org.uk/w-u-e/isaac/ipitman.htm>
• Sir Isaac Pitman. In Encyclopædia Britannica, <http://www.britannica.com>. Retrieved on February 12, 2007, <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9060218>

External links

• The Joy of Pitman Shorthand – On Pitman Shorthand, its history, other shorthands, and much more
• Pitman Collection at University of Bath Archives
• Shorthand World - Shorthand website that has general information on all strains
• Sir Isaac Pitman – Biography at NNDB
• What is Pitman shorthand? – Explains some advantages of Pitman Shorthand
• Writing samples of Pitman Shorthand – A couple of samples in Pitman Shorthand

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