Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, uh, no, Staratu came out because of that. I have, of course been deep in my Dracula bram Stoker rabbit hole, yeah, which I've mentioned on recent shows. It had been a little while since I reread the original English language version of Dracula, and after I reread Powers of Darkness, which is the Icelandic version, which when it was translated back into English, reveals a lot of differences from the original. We talked about that a little on our bram Stoker episode. There's some fun scholarship around it, and whether or not bram Stoker actually prepared a different version for Sweden and Iceland, or whether some interpreter just took some things upon themselves. It's pretty interesting thing if you want to get into that. But after I reread that, I then was like, well, I think I need to go back to the eighteen ninety seven novel and compare them. This is not a Halloween episode, so don't worry with all this gothic talk. But what jumped out at me. Even more than just trying to track the variations in the narrative was just how often shorthand is mentioned in the book as a plot point. At one point, Jonathan Harker writes a letter to Mina in Shorthand while he is captive in Transylvania, the idea being that the villainous titular count will not be able to read shorthand, and then in Mina's journal entries in the book, she mentions how she's been learning shorthand so she can help her future husband in his work. She also presents some notes to Van Helsing in Shorthand when she first meets him as kind of a burn after she feels infantilized him because she wants to show him that she is very smart and accomplished. She feels very guilty about doing this almost instantly because Van Helting can't read shorthand and turns out to be a very nice man. But all of this got my brain wondering about why bram Stoker might be so focused on shorthand. So now we're going to talk about shorthand during this time period. There was a lot going on with shorthand. At the time, it had become very very popular in the couple of decades leading up to this, and that's largely due to one person, because it turns out of that if you search online for the inventor of shorthand, one name comes up from the nineteenth century, even though there have been various forms of systematized shorthand or abbreviated writing in play for literal centuries. But today we are going to talk about that one person that comes up, Isaac Pittman, and how he developed and marketed a system of shorthand that became very widely adopted in the nineteenth century when Bram Stoker was writing his book. Yes, So, if by chance you don't know what shorthand is, it's an abbreviated way to write, and it's often used for taking down notes or recording what a person is saying verbatim. There are lots of different names that have been used for it, including stenography, to kigraphy, bracigraphy, and as we'll see in today's story, a lot of other stuff. This can really look like indecipherable scribbles to somebody who was not familiar with the system being used, and it's really not a modern invention. Although what we are talking about is the nineteenth century today. There have been systematized abbreviation methods for writing almost as long as there have been written languages. Xenophon, a Greek historian who was born circa four thirty BCE, used it when he wrote down the Memoirs of Crates. Both Chinese and Japanese languages have their own abbreviated writing schemes, as do a lot of other languages. The Diary of Samuel Peeps, often referenced on this show, was written in shorthand, and Martin Luther wrote his sermons in shorthand. In fact, a lot of average people wrote in shorthand in previous stages of history, sometimes to record events unfolding around them, but also because they could just rapidly get their thoughts down on paper and then revise and refine them as they copied those notes into a long hand form. That's a practice that comes up in today's show as well. We won't go through all the various people who worked on their own shorthand methods, but we will mention one in particular because it was used by today's main subject, to Isaac Pittman, and also because the book we're about to name has just an entertainingly long title, and you know we love those. In seventeen eighty six, Samuel Taylor published an essay intended to establish a standard for an universal system of scenography or shorthand writing upon such simple and approved principles as have never before been offered to the public, whereby a person in a few days may instruct himself to write shorthand correctly, and by a little practice cannot fail taking down any discourse delivered in public. This cost one guinea that was considered to be pricey enough that this book was an investment. By that point, Taylor had been working on his system for about thirteen years. He had created simpler versions of nineteen letters of the alphabet because his system did not need vowels in words that had more than one syllable, and this also eliminated any consonants that were deemed to be superfluous. Yeah, he was just like, hey, what about instead of you write an A, you do this little dash. She'll be fine. Uh. And that brings us to Isaac Pittman. He is the person who is invoked frequently as the inventor of shorthand, though that's obviously not really accurate. He did though, come up with a new form of it, and one that became incredibly popular, and he is a very interesting figure. So that is why we are stepping away from my initial plan of just doing a history of stenography to really talk about him in his life. Isaac Pittman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, on January fourth, eighteen thirteen. His father, Samuel Pittman, worked in the textile industry, and his mother was Maria Davis Pittman. The family included ten other children, of which Isaac was the third, and they were very religious. Samuel was the superintendent of a Sunday school. From a young age, Isaac is said to have been very fascinated with language and writing in the ways in which ideas were recorded. As a child, Isaac didn't get a lot of formal education. He later said it was hardly worthy of mention, but he was so curious as a kid that he managed to get a pretty fair amount of self education from reading. In addition to language, he devoured books about astronomy, and then that led him to study math because he wanted to be able to calculate the movements of celestial bodies. At this point in time, astronomy and astrology had diverged for the most part, but Pittman used his astronomy knowledge to write horoscopes for his entire family. I don't know why, I find that very charming. He also carried around a copy of a grammar book that he studied whenever he had a free moment. According to the account of a family friend, from the time he was twelve, Isaac would copy little bits from various books into a blank book that he always kept with him, with the intention of memorizing anything that he committed to its pages. A nineteen nineteen biography of Pittman says that one of his pocket companions, which still exists today, contained the entirety of a Greek grammar guide. And to be clear, Isaac did attend school, even if he didn't seem to think it was an especially robust amount. In addition to the schooling that the Pittman children did get, they also had music lessons in the evening. For a while, their father had hired a woman to come in and teach some music every night, and then Samuel also bought two globes for them to study. Samuel also joined one of the area's first lending libraries, and Isaac made regular use of that membership. Isaac later wrote about how as a teenager he came to be interested in shorthand. He noted, quote, with that instinctive love of knowledge common to boys, I began to study shorthand. I saw that it would be a great advantage to write six times as fast as I had been accustomed to. When I borrowed a book, read it through, copied the alphabet and arbitrary words, and have written shorthand ever since. His cousin, Charles Laverton, had loaned him a book about the Samuel Taylor method of scenography, and that was the beginning of a lifelong fascination and study. Coming up, we're going to talk about Isaac's move into the workforce, but first we'll pause for a sponsor break. Pittman went right to work as a clerk in eighteen twenty nine at the age of sixteen. His first job was in James Edgel's cloth mill, where his father was a supervisor, and then when his father opened his own mill two years later, Isaac moved there to work, still serving as a clerk. His older brother, Jacob once wrote of Isaac quote. Isaac never had any of that rollicking nonsense about him peculiar to most of us boys. Nor do I remember his ever stopping on his way from school to play, but home directly. He went either to his books or to his work. And Isaac does seem to have been pretty serious from an early age. As a very young man, he became an advocate for temperance, and he swore off drink for the rest of his life, with one minor exception for a bit, and we'll talk about that shortly. At the end of every twelve hour work day, Isaac went home and read as much as he could. He kept focusing on expanding his education. He also got up at four a m. To read before work. He had been really disappointed when he had to end his school days to work full time, and he said to have begged his father to let him go back. As Samuel Pittman became more financially successful, he sent Isaac to a specialty school for career training at the Training College of British Foreign School Society. He got teaching credentials. Isaac had already shown an interest in teaching, and he had taught at the Sunday school. He did so well at the training college that the headmaster wrote to Samuel, quote, you may send me as many more of your children as you can spare. Five more of Isaac's siblings took that offer. Jacob, Joseph, Risella, Jane and Mary Pittman all attended at various times. After getting his teaching certification, Isaac went from clerking to a full time teaching position in Lincolnshire at Barton upon Humber, at a school known as Long's School. Long School had one hundred and twenty students, and as master, Pittman made seventy pounds a year. In Marton, Isaac dedicated himself not just to his students, but also to the community. He gave free lectures on astronomy and also on temperance, and he became a member of the Methodist Church was very active in his church community. He also prepared and distributed a temperance pamphlet to everyone in town, which included the rhetoric quote ardent spirits, pure or mixed, are pronounced by the highest authorities in our land to be evil spirits. This is not generally believed faith is weak because knowledge is imperfect. Not till lately has the old fashioned falsity been exploded that a comfortable glass does one good. Spirits and poisons are synonymous terms. A few years into his time at Barton, Isaac got married to missus Mary Holgate. Mary was the widow of George Holgate, who had left her pretty well off. The two of them got married the day after Isaac's twenty second birthday, on January fifth, eighteen thirty five. Because of Mary's financial standing, Isaac was able to live a much more luxurious life than a teacher normally would have. But they moved from their home a year after the wedding because Isaac was offered a job at a new nonconformist school in Watten under Edge and Lecester. This move had the advantage of bringing Isaac closer to his brother Jacob, who was also teaching by this time and had married a woman who was also a teacher. Their family was like teachers teachers teachers. His sibling group did a lot of teaching. As you'll see, he brings some of his other siblings in to teach under him. Isaac and Mary lived at Wotton for a little more than three years, and these were very important times for him. For one, he was introduced to the works of Emmanuel Swedenborg by a man named John Kingwell Bragg. He happened to meet Bragg by chance when the men were sharing a stage coach. Swedenborg's religious ideas were controversial. In the shortest version. He didn't believe in the Holy Trinity, and he thought that he had a direct interaction line with God. He believed that the spiritual was something that was within every person at their core. And all of this might sound kind of benign today, but even sixty years after Swedenborg's death, when he was being encountered by Isaac, these were contentious and some people believed dangerous ideas. But Isaac Pittman was fascinated and he really thought Swedenborg was onto something. He became a Swedenborgian essentially, and he paid for that fascination because for these beliefs, Pittman was turned out of his church and he also lost his teaching job. While the institutions he had been part of changed their relationships with him, Pittman made a lot of changes to his life himself during this time as well. Up to eighteen thirty seven, while he spoke out against spiritust liquors, he still like a lot of people, drank beer, but he completely cut that out of his life. That year, he also significantly changed his eating habits. After being asked to kill a bird for the cook to use to make dinner, Pittman was not able to do it, and he started to think about his relationship with animals and their use as food. He came away from those reflections a vegetarian. Later he would share that his ongoing issues with upset stomach and heartburn went away as soon as he changed his diet in this way. He wrote the following in eighteen seventy nine in a letter to the Times, quote, My dietetic experience is simply this. About forty years ago, dyspepsia was carrying me to the grave. Medical advisers recommended animal food three times a day instead of once, and a glass of wine. On this regimen, I was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. I avoided the meat and the wine, gradually recovered my digestive power, and have never since then known by any pain that I have a stomach. I love that turn of phrase. I wouldn't even know I had a stomach. It never bothers me. So this is all a lot to go through, right, losing your religious community, losing your job, your diet in a pretty significant way, particularly for the time, and then cutting out that last bit of alcohol. But Isaac was still a very young man. He didn't need to worry about money thanks to his wife's income, and after having been dismissed from that job but still wanting to teach, he regrouped and he opened his own school. He put it on the same street as the school that had let him go. I don't know if that was just like the fortune of where he was able to get a lot, or if it literally was like a way to thumb his nose at them, but free to set his own curriculum. One of the subjects that Pittman taught his students was shorthand. He had been using Samuel Taylor's system for years. At that point, it was the only way he took notes. He also wrote the first drafts of his correspondence that way, so that he could capture what he wanted to say before transcribing it into longhand. And so he started teaching Samuel Taylor's method of shorthand to his students, But soon he realized that there was a big obstacle to this effort. There still wasn't a reasonably priced and simple to understand book to use as a study guide or a reference, so he set out to create one. He wrote his guide based on what he knew was needed in practical coursework, and prepared it for submission to publisher Samuel Bagster. Bagster accepted the manuscript, but before putting it to print, he got a colleague whose name we don't know to look at it, and this colleague wrote to Bagster and said, quote, the system mister Pittman has sent to you is already on the market. Now. If you will compile a new system, I think you will be more likely to succeed in your object to popularize shorthand there will be novelty about it. What this existing book was is also unclear, and so is why someone like Pittman wouldn't have known about this book already existing. But Bagster took this back to Isaac Pittman in May of eighteen thirty seven and encouraged him to do as this feedback suggested and create a whole new system. Isaac spent his summer dedicated to this new endeavor. He was wrapping up work on another project that he had been in the midst of for Bagster, that was a corrected edition of the Comprehensive Bible, and that project had started. I love this so much. After Isaac wrote to Bagster, who was the Bible's publisher and was a very well known Bible publisher, with a list of errors that he had found in the circulating version of it. And so then Bagster was like, fine, do you want to just work for me and make a corrected edition? And he did, Please don't do that to publishers. So that's not the way to get a job today. But with that Bible almost done, Isaac could focus on this new and apparently thrilling challenge of forming a shorthand system. Isaac's brother Ben later wrote, quote, we talked of nothing else on our way to and from school and in our occasional morning walks, and intense was the joy of my brother at the completion of his long task the Comprehensive Bible and the opportunity it afforded him to give his time and thoughts, as well as his heart, to new ideas in the field of experiment and usefulness. Then opening up to him Pimman's idea differed from what had come before in one very important way, and we'll talk about it after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going. Isaac Pittman had the idea to develop a new system of shorthand that was based on sounds representing words phonetically rather than just abbreviating the words and making simpler letters. He started with vowels because that seemed the most lacking in existing systems. You'll recall that Taylor often did away with them altogether. Pittman was really nervous about figuring out those vowels and creating a new approach to shorthand. But once he did, it was as if the whole system became almost obvious to him. He described this as follows quote. I saw the truth, practiced it, and it became delightful. In a few months, I got clear of the shallow waters and breakers of our present orthography and committed myself to the boundless deep of phonographic writing. So this new form that he came up with was tested in the classroom. Isaac's younger brothers taught at his school, and his brother Ben, who was only fifteen at this point, learned the new shorthand and taught it to a class of a couple of dozen students to test it. Then the entire Pittman family learned it and started using it to continue to test its value. When Isaac had compiled his new system and written out a guide for it in manuscript form, he brought it to Bagster before eighteen thirty seven was out. At the age of twenty four, Isaac had published Stenographic Soundhand. This was not a big fancy publication scenario where Bagster handled everything. It sounds a lot more like kind of a DIY effort, with Pittman getting helped to assemble the books after Bagster had the leaves printed. This is evidenced by a charming note that Isaac wrote to Bagster quote, I have sent two hundred stenographies for present sale, and the rest to make up fifteen hundred will follow by wagon in about a week. I think I shall want fifteen hundred for myself. Please let me know in a month or two how they sell. I must beg pardon for the manner of sewing in this two hundred. The next will be dark colored thread and done properly. Also, the labels will be more neatly in the center. The stitching was done by the elder boys in my school who have learned the system. They are quite delighted to spend two or three days in this sort of half play. Since this first essay, we have had a lesson on the subject from a stationer. I love this so much. Yeah, that he had the kids at his school sew together his books, and I was like, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. Let me get a pro and ear to tell you how to do it well. This also highlights how like printing and book binding are two different things. Yes, well, and you know there were books that Bagster was handling everything for like he was known, like I said, as a Bible publisher, but he was kind of doing this as a little bit of a favor, and they wanted to make it an inexpensive book so anybody could afford it. So he was like, I can't pay for the binding because that will drive the price up. But if we can figure out a way to do that, then sure, that's no problem. I just I love everything about this. According to a nineteen nineteen biography of Pittman written by Alfred Baker, quote, the Pitmanic system was introduced to the world quietly and without advertisement. As far as can be discovered, its author engaged in no special efforts to make it known. He was indeed far more concerned in affecting improvements in his work for the contemplated second edition. Pittman called this first edition a feeler to see how it was received, and he was continuing to teach it as school and work on revisions for all this time, this wasn't his only focus. Two years after the first edition of Cinographics Soundhand was released, Pittman moved to Bath and started another school there. One possible draw was the Swedenborgian Church that had been established there, which Isaac and Mary joined right after the move. Isaac meanwhile was preparing a second edition of the book, which he wanted to have a catchier title. He and Bagster landed at phonography, a new name, new thing. According to Bagster. Yeah, there's a whole interesting account of them kind of landing at that word and Isaac being like, that's not really a word yet, and Bagster's like, right, because we're gonna make it a word, because no one knows how to describe this kind of shorthand. So while this may have had a quiet start. By eighteen forty six, Isaac's shorthand phonography system had become quite popular. This was because, in part in eighteen thirty nine, a uniform postage law was passed in the UK called the Penny Postage Law, and it went into effect in eighteen forty and that law stated that any letter could be sent for one penny, and Pittman was ready for this change. He had made a penny plate laid out in his system in a very abbreviated way, that he could mail to school headmasters to get them interested in phonography. They could also per a note He included share this with students if they wished, and he he also offered on that brief print the note that quote any person may receive lessons from the author by post gratuitously. He also let people send him their work and their exercises in the system, and he would personally correct any errors and make notations and send it back. This was essentially the beginning of correspondence courses, at least in the modern sense. Incidentally, Pittman got really angry at people who started charging for this same service, even though he had originally planned to do so himself, but he changed his mind and made it free, hoping that that would help entice more people to start using it. But then he was like, you should not get paid a wage to do this. I'll do it all for free, even if I work nineteen hours a day, which is not wise. Next, he arranged lecture tours during school breaks so he could go out and teach people phonography and explain and its usefulness as quote a method of writing all languages by means of signs that express sounds. To prove that, he included exercises in his book that included multiple languages, including the one hundredth Psalm, which he featured in French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Hebrew. He would also have the audience members at his lectures give him dictation in foreign languages so he could write them on a large blackboard in his version of phonography. Realistically, it doesn't quite work in all languages. There are languages that don't have the same sounds in them correct, but it does work well with quite a few of them. Apparently. Yeah, I will confess I have never used it or learned shorthand, but apparently there are a lot of languages that will perfectly fit into this system. But thanks to all of these marketing efforts, Pittman's system did start to catch on, and his writing lesson supplements and books started selling incredibly well. Phonography was reprinted many times to meet this demand, and in eighteen forty six, when it really got popular, he actually shut down the school to use that space for more print facilities. The school morphed at that point and it became the first phonetic institute. He would have to move in the years that followed to larger and larger facilities as demand for phonetic books and information continued to grow and to spread his method even farther than he could. With this new institute, he started a periodical, the Phonetic Journal. During this time, he was also working on another concept, phonetic spelling reform. He was trying to reform spelling in English to a more rational system without all the odd exceptions that are so common. This was sort of a natural follow on from his phonography work, as he ended up printing a second journal, phone Graphic Correspondent. He was the editor. He set in a lecture to the Phonographic Corresponding Society in eighteen forty four quote. Many attempts have been made to reform the errors of our written language, but hitherto without success. There was no desire created in the public mind for a consistent system of orthography. Now, by your benevolent exertions and spreading abroad the truths of phonetic writing, a desire has been created for phonotype, a desire that will increase on that which it feeds. He collaborated with mathematician Alexander John Ellis on creating the English phonotypic alphabet, which never really caught on, much like all of the other attempts to make English phonetically spelled. Yeah, there is in the note for this episode a link to one of his publications that is typeset phonetically and it is one of the hardest things I have ever tried to make my way through. Admittedly some of that is just me, but I'm curious if anybody wants to go look for these to see how they do. On April twenty first, eighteen sixty one, Isaac got married a second time, this time to a woman named Isabella Masters. His first wife, Mary, had died in eighteen fifty four, but the specifics of her passing kind of eluded me. His brother's biography even mentions it only in passing and actually references Isaac's feelings for another woman. We'll talk about that a little bit behind the scenes. On Friday, Isaac and Isabella welcomed their first child, Alfred, a year after the wedding, and then a second son, Ernest, was born in eighteen sixty four. By the end of the eighteen fifties, Isaac had started setting aside money to save up for a purpose built facility to house his institute. He eventually bought a block of buildings at auction in eighteen seventy three. For this project, we hired architect Frederick John Williams to design the new building, which made use of some of the existing structures on the lot. The resulting building was four floors plus a basement. When it was complete, Isaac fitted it out with the latest printing technology, a steam powered press. His staff had a steep learning curve with it, and there were innumerable stumbling blocks to keeping it up and running. And then it was also so loud that a neighbor made a noise complaint. It turned out that running a press was really challenging, but he did stay in the printing business, and eventually he moved into creating a larger publishing company. When his sons reached adulthood, Isaac formed a publishing house with them called Isaac Pittman and Sons. They printed the various books and study materials that Isaac designed, and then eventually expanded into a more generalized education press. That press continued into the twentieth century, and then it was eventually purchased by another publisher in the nineteen eighties, so it went on for a long time. Less than a decade after starting the publishing company with his sons, Isaac Pittman was knighted in eighteen ninety four. Two years after that, in the autumn of eighteen ninety six, the papers reported that Sir Isaac was quite ill with a quote congestion of the lungs. He continued on for several months, sometimes rallying some energy, but mostly having to stay in bed. He was pragmatic about his health. He wrote to his brother, quote, I must expect a continual decrease of strength until the heart gives its last pulsation, and the angelic messengers who wait on the dying draw out the spiritual body from this one. Then I shall have a sound heart and get to work in my new sphere of life. His eighty fifth birthday party was celebrated with his friends at home the following January. He was very weakened at this point, but he was still managing the details of his press from a wheelchair. He made all of the arrangements for his January publications before his death on January twenty second, eighteen ninety seven, at the age of eighty four. He had sent a note shortly before he passed to his minister which read quote, to those who ask how Isaac Pittman passed away, say peacefully and with no more concern than in passing from one room into another, to take up some further employment. Many years after Isaac Pittman created his system, he gave a lecture in which he talked about the genesis of his method and his ongoing efforts to refine it through use, which included quote, the shorthand alphabet given in the first edition of Phonography contains the elements of the present matured system, but in several of its details, it was imperfect because it proceeded from a finite mind. These imperfections were discovered by experience and removed as a skillful anatomist can from three or four bones construct the entire skeleton of an animal. So from three or four shorthand signs or letters that have been acknowledged from the commencement of shorthand writing is the best. For certain letters, we can construct a natural shorthand alphabet. Pittman shorthand lives on. It remains one of the three most popular shorthand systems in the world, alongside the Greg method, which came up just a few decades after him, and the t Line methods. I found him to be such a fascinating creature. M hmmm, I have very joyous email to read. Oh good, this is very very joyous to me personally. So this is from our listener Hannah, who writes has nothing to do with history. Get ready. Hello. Following up on my email from quite a while ago. Thank you so much to Holly for all the advice about Galaxy's Edge. Our original trip got postponed by quite a bit, but we finally made it to Disney this week and even got to do a full five day trip. We did rope drop early access hours. We were even the first in line to scan into the park and we spent twelve full hours in Galaxies Edge. I cannot wait to go back again. It was the coolest experience ever. I could live there if they would let me. We were able to ride Rise of the Resistance three times, truly the most amazing ride I have ever been on, even ties with the Haunted Mansion. For me, Hannah, we're neck and neck. We feel the same. Smuggler's Run was accepting parties of two in their single rider cue and we walked on the ride six times in one hour. I got pilot once and crashed the Millennium Falcon. I'm so proud of you. Uh Ogus Cantina was fantastic and I want to recreate their cocktails at home now. Ronto Roasters and Docking Bay were so delicious, and I had to exercise so much self control to not buy all of the merch. Thank you again for all your advice, and I hope you get to go to galaxy He's Edge again soon too. Hannah and then Hannah sent pictures of their trip and they look so delighted and joyous, and it makes my heart so happy. I'm actually going to Galaxies Edge in a couple of days. With my best friend because I'm spoiled I, as Tracy knows, sometimes I work from Galaxy's Edge. Sometimes I just decide I'm going to work for Galaxy's Edge tomorrow and I we're close enough it's a forty five minute flight, and go down there, bring my laptops and in Toronto roasters and type while I while I eat delicious things. It's a great, great way to live. That is thanks to many Kajillian business trips giving me all of the all of the sky miles on Earth. I can just be like I'm going goodbye. I hope everybody gets to do things like that that delight them. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me, Hannah. It made me so happy and made my heart very joyous to know that you had a time as good as I hope for you. So I hope you to go back again. I too, would love to live there. If you would like to write to us about your vacation's historical or Star Wars or otherwise, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show. It's so easy. You could do it in the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, uh, no, Staratu came out because of that. I have, of course been deep in my Dracula bram Stoker rabbit hole, yeah, which I've mentioned on recent shows. It had been a little while since I reread the original English language version of Dracula, and after I reread Powers of Darkness, which is the Icelandic version, which when it was translated back into English, reveals a lot of differences from the original. We talked about that a little on our bram Stoker episode. There's some fun scholarship around it, and whether or not bram Stoker actually prepared a different version for Sweden and Iceland, or whether some interpreter just took some things upon themselves. It's pretty interesting thing if you want to get into that. But after I reread that, I then was like, well, I think I need to go back to the eighteen ninety seven novel and compare them. This is not a Halloween episode, so don't worry with all this gothic talk. But what jumped out at me. Even more than just trying to track the variations in the narrative was just how often shorthand is mentioned in the book as a plot point. At one point, Jonathan Harker writes a letter to Mina in Shorthand while he is captive in Transylvania, the idea being that the villainous titular count will not be able to read shorthand, and then in Mina's journal entries in the book, she mentions how she's been learning shorthand so she can help her future husband in his work. She also presents some notes to Van Helsing in Shorthand when she first meets him as kind of a burn after she feels infantilized him because she wants to show him that she is very smart and accomplished. She feels very guilty about doing this almost instantly because Van Helting can't read shorthand and turns out to be a very nice man. But all of this got my brain wondering about why bram Stoker might be so focused on shorthand. So now we're going to talk about shorthand during this time period. There was a lot going on with shorthand. At the time, it had become very very popular in the couple of decades leading up to this, and that's largely due to one person, because it turns out of that if you search online for the inventor of shorthand, one name comes up from the nineteenth century, even though there have been various forms of systematized shorthand or abbreviated writing in play for literal centuries. But today we are going to talk about that one person that comes up, Isaac Pittman, and how he developed and marketed a system of shorthand that became very widely adopted in the nineteenth century when Bram Stoker was writing his book. Yes, So, if by chance you don't know what shorthand is, it's an abbreviated way to write, and it's often used for taking down notes or recording what a person is saying verbatim. There are lots of different names that have been used for it, including stenography, to kigraphy, bracigraphy, and as we'll see in today's story, a lot of other stuff. This can really look like indecipherable scribbles to somebody who was not familiar with the system being used, and it's really not a modern invention. Although what we are talking about is the nineteenth century today. There have been systematized abbreviation methods for writing almost as long as there have been written languages. Xenophon, a Greek historian who was born circa four thirty BCE, used it when he wrote down the Memoirs of Crates. Both Chinese and Japanese languages have their own abbreviated writing schemes, as do a lot of other languages. The Diary of Samuel Peeps, often referenced on this show, was written in shorthand, and Martin Luther wrote his sermons in shorthand. In fact, a lot of average people wrote in shorthand in previous stages of history, sometimes to record events unfolding around them, but also because they could just rapidly get their thoughts down on paper and then revise and refine them as they copied those notes into a long hand form. That's a practice that comes up in today's show as well. We won't go through all the various people who worked on their own shorthand methods, but we will mention one in particular because it was used by today's main subject, to Isaac Pittman, and also because the book we're about to name has just an entertainingly long title, and you know we love those. In seventeen eighty six, Samuel Taylor published an essay intended to establish a standard for an universal system of scenography or shorthand writing upon such simple and approved principles as have never before been offered to the public, whereby a person in a few days may instruct himself to write shorthand correctly, and by a little practice cannot fail taking down any discourse delivered in public. This cost one guinea that was considered to be pricey enough that this book was an investment. By that point, Taylor had been working on his system for about thirteen years. He had created simpler versions of nineteen letters of the alphabet because his system did not need vowels in words that had more than one syllable, and this also eliminated any consonants that were deemed to be superfluous. Yeah, he was just like, hey, what about instead of you write an A, you do this little dash. She'll be fine. Uh. And that brings us to Isaac Pittman. He is the person who is invoked frequently as the inventor of shorthand, though that's obviously not really accurate. He did though, come up with a new form of it, and one that became incredibly popular, and he is a very interesting figure. So that is why we are stepping away from my initial plan of just doing a history of stenography to really talk about him in his life. Isaac Pittman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, on January fourth, eighteen thirteen. His father, Samuel Pittman, worked in the textile industry, and his mother was Maria Davis Pittman. The family included ten other children, of which Isaac was the third, and they were very religious. Samuel was the superintendent of a Sunday school. From a young age, Isaac is said to have been very fascinated with language and writing in the ways in which ideas were recorded. As a child, Isaac didn't get a lot of formal education. He later said it was hardly worthy of mention, but he was so curious as a kid that he managed to get a pretty fair amount of self education from reading. In addition to language, he devoured books about astronomy, and then that led him to study math because he wanted to be able to calculate the movements of celestial bodies. At this point in time, astronomy and astrology had diverged for the most part, but Pittman used his astronomy knowledge to write horoscopes for his entire family. I don't know why, I find that very charming. He also carried around a copy of a grammar book that he studied whenever he had a free moment. According to the account of a family friend, from the time he was twelve, Isaac would copy little bits from various books into a blank book that he always kept with him, with the intention of memorizing anything that he committed to its pages. A nineteen nineteen biography of Pittman says that one of his pocket companions, which still exists today, contained the entirety of a Greek grammar guide. And to be clear, Isaac did attend school, even if he didn't seem to think it was an especially robust amount. In addition to the schooling that the Pittman children did get, they also had music lessons in the evening. For a while, their father had hired a woman to come in and teach some music every night, and then Samuel also bought two globes for them to study. Samuel also joined one of the area's first lending libraries, and Isaac made regular use of that membership. Isaac later wrote about how as a teenager he came to be interested in shorthand. He noted, quote, with that instinctive love of knowledge common to boys, I began to study shorthand. I saw that it would be a great advantage to write six times as fast as I had been accustomed to. When I borrowed a book, read it through, copied the alphabet and arbitrary words, and have written shorthand ever since. His cousin, Charles Laverton, had loaned him a book about the Samuel Taylor method of scenography, and that was the beginning of a lifelong fascination and study. Coming up, we're going to talk about Isaac's move into the workforce, but first we'll pause for a sponsor break. Pittman went right to work as a clerk in eighteen twenty nine at the age of sixteen. His first job was in James Edgel's cloth mill, where his father was a supervisor, and then when his father opened his own mill two years later, Isaac moved there to work, still serving as a clerk. His older brother, Jacob once wrote of Isaac quote. Isaac never had any of that rollicking nonsense about him peculiar to most of us boys. Nor do I remember his ever stopping on his way from school to play, but home directly. He went either to his books or to his work. And Isaac does seem to have been pretty serious from an early age. As a very young man, he became an advocate for temperance, and he swore off drink for the rest of his life, with one minor exception for a bit, and we'll talk about that shortly. At the end of every twelve hour work day, Isaac went home and read as much as he could. He kept focusing on expanding his education. He also got up at four a m. To read before work. He had been really disappointed when he had to end his school days to work full time, and he said to have begged his father to let him go back. As Samuel Pittman became more financially successful, he sent Isaac to a specialty school for career training at the Training College of British Foreign School Society. He got teaching credentials. Isaac had already shown an interest in teaching, and he had taught at the Sunday school. He did so well at the training college that the headmaster wrote to Samuel, quote, you may send me as many more of your children as you can spare. Five more of Isaac's siblings took that offer. Jacob, Joseph, Risella, Jane and Mary Pittman all attended at various times. After getting his teaching certification, Isaac went from clerking to a full time teaching position in Lincolnshire at Barton upon Humber, at a school known as Long's School. Long School had one hundred and twenty students, and as master, Pittman made seventy pounds a year. In Marton, Isaac dedicated himself not just to his students, but also to the community. He gave free lectures on astronomy and also on temperance, and he became a member of the Methodist Church was very active in his church community. He also prepared and distributed a temperance pamphlet to everyone in town, which included the rhetoric quote ardent spirits, pure or mixed, are pronounced by the highest authorities in our land to be evil spirits. This is not generally believed faith is weak because knowledge is imperfect. Not till lately has the old fashioned falsity been exploded that a comfortable glass does one good. Spirits and poisons are synonymous terms. A few years into his time at Barton, Isaac got married to missus Mary Holgate. Mary was the widow of George Holgate, who had left her pretty well off. The two of them got married the day after Isaac's twenty second birthday, on January fifth, eighteen thirty five. Because of Mary's financial standing, Isaac was able to live a much more luxurious life than a teacher normally would have. But they moved from their home a year after the wedding because Isaac was offered a job at a new nonconformist school in Watten under Edge and Lecester. This move had the advantage of bringing Isaac closer to his brother Jacob, who was also teaching by this time and had married a woman who was also a teacher. Their family was like teachers teachers teachers. His sibling group did a lot of teaching. As you'll see, he brings some of his other siblings in to teach under him. Isaac and Mary lived at Wotton for a little more than three years, and these were very important times for him. For one, he was introduced to the works of Emmanuel Swedenborg by a man named John Kingwell Bragg. He happened to meet Bragg by chance when the men were sharing a stage coach. Swedenborg's religious ideas were controversial. In the shortest version. He didn't believe in the Holy Trinity, and he thought that he had a direct interaction line with God. He believed that the spiritual was something that was within every person at their core. And all of this might sound kind of benign today, but even sixty years after Swedenborg's death, when he was being encountered by Isaac, these were contentious and some people believed dangerous ideas. But Isaac Pittman was fascinated and he really thought Swedenborg was onto something. He became a Swedenborgian essentially, and he paid for that fascination because for these beliefs, Pittman was turned out of his church and he also lost his teaching job. While the institutions he had been part of changed their relationships with him, Pittman made a lot of changes to his life himself during this time as well. Up to eighteen thirty seven, while he spoke out against spiritust liquors, he still like a lot of people, drank beer, but he completely cut that out of his life. That year, he also significantly changed his eating habits. After being asked to kill a bird for the cook to use to make dinner, Pittman was not able to do it, and he started to think about his relationship with animals and their use as food. He came away from those reflections a vegetarian. Later he would share that his ongoing issues with upset stomach and heartburn went away as soon as he changed his diet in this way. He wrote the following in eighteen seventy nine in a letter to the Times, quote, My dietetic experience is simply this. About forty years ago, dyspepsia was carrying me to the grave. Medical advisers recommended animal food three times a day instead of once, and a glass of wine. On this regimen, I was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. I avoided the meat and the wine, gradually recovered my digestive power, and have never since then known by any pain that I have a stomach. I love that turn of phrase. I wouldn't even know I had a stomach. It never bothers me. So this is all a lot to go through, right, losing your religious community, losing your job, your diet in a pretty significant way, particularly for the time, and then cutting out that last bit of alcohol. But Isaac was still a very young man. He didn't need to worry about money thanks to his wife's income, and after having been dismissed from that job but still wanting to teach, he regrouped and he opened his own school. He put it on the same street as the school that had let him go. I don't know if that was just like the fortune of where he was able to get a lot, or if it literally was like a way to thumb his nose at them, but free to set his own curriculum. One of the subjects that Pittman taught his students was shorthand. He had been using Samuel Taylor's system for years. At that point, it was the only way he took notes. He also wrote the first drafts of his correspondence that way, so that he could capture what he wanted to say before transcribing it into longhand. And so he started teaching Samuel Taylor's method of shorthand to his students, But soon he realized that there was a big obstacle to this effort. There still wasn't a reasonably priced and simple to understand book to use as a study guide or a reference, so he set out to create one. He wrote his guide based on what he knew was needed in practical coursework, and prepared it for submission to publisher Samuel Bagster. Bagster accepted the manuscript, but before putting it to print, he got a colleague whose name we don't know to look at it, and this colleague wrote to Bagster and said, quote, the system mister Pittman has sent to you is already on the market. Now. If you will compile a new system, I think you will be more likely to succeed in your object to popularize shorthand there will be novelty about it. What this existing book was is also unclear, and so is why someone like Pittman wouldn't have known about this book already existing. But Bagster took this back to Isaac Pittman in May of eighteen thirty seven and encouraged him to do as this feedback suggested and create a whole new system. Isaac spent his summer dedicated to this new endeavor. He was wrapping up work on another project that he had been in the midst of for Bagster, that was a corrected edition of the Comprehensive Bible, and that project had started. I love this so much. After Isaac wrote to Bagster, who was the Bible's publisher and was a very well known Bible publisher, with a list of errors that he had found in the circulating version of it. And so then Bagster was like, fine, do you want to just work for me and make a corrected edition? And he did, Please don't do that to publishers. So that's not the way to get a job today. But with that Bible almost done, Isaac could focus on this new and apparently thrilling challenge of forming a shorthand system. Isaac's brother Ben later wrote, quote, we talked of nothing else on our way to and from school and in our occasional morning walks, and intense was the joy of my brother at the completion of his long task the Comprehensive Bible and the opportunity it afforded him to give his time and thoughts, as well as his heart, to new ideas in the field of experiment and usefulness. Then opening up to him Pimman's idea differed from what had come before in one very important way, and we'll talk about it after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going. Isaac Pittman had the idea to develop a new system of shorthand that was based on sounds representing words phonetically rather than just abbreviating the words and making simpler letters. He started with vowels because that seemed the most lacking in existing systems. You'll recall that Taylor often did away with them altogether. Pittman was really nervous about figuring out those vowels and creating a new approach to shorthand. But once he did, it was as if the whole system became almost obvious to him. He described this as follows quote. I saw the truth, practiced it, and it became delightful. In a few months, I got clear of the shallow waters and breakers of our present orthography and committed myself to the boundless deep of phonographic writing. So this new form that he came up with was tested in the classroom. Isaac's younger brothers taught at his school, and his brother Ben, who was only fifteen at this point, learned the new shorthand and taught it to a class of a couple of dozen students to test it. Then the entire Pittman family learned it and started using it to continue to test its value. When Isaac had compiled his new system and written out a guide for it in manuscript form, he brought it to Bagster before eighteen thirty seven was out. At the age of twenty four, Isaac had published Stenographic Soundhand. This was not a big fancy publication scenario where Bagster handled everything. It sounds a lot more like kind of a DIY effort, with Pittman getting helped to assemble the books after Bagster had the leaves printed. This is evidenced by a charming note that Isaac wrote to Bagster quote, I have sent two hundred stenographies for present sale, and the rest to make up fifteen hundred will follow by wagon in about a week. I think I shall want fifteen hundred for myself. Please let me know in a month or two how they sell. I must beg pardon for the manner of sewing in this two hundred. The next will be dark colored thread and done properly. Also, the labels will be more neatly in the center. The stitching was done by the elder boys in my school who have learned the system. They are quite delighted to spend two or three days in this sort of half play. Since this first essay, we have had a lesson on the subject from a stationer. I love this so much. Yeah, that he had the kids at his school sew together his books, and I was like, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. Let me get a pro and ear to tell you how to do it well. This also highlights how like printing and book binding are two different things. Yes, well, and you know there were books that Bagster was handling everything for like he was known, like I said, as a Bible publisher, but he was kind of doing this as a little bit of a favor, and they wanted to make it an inexpensive book so anybody could afford it. So he was like, I can't pay for the binding because that will drive the price up. But if we can figure out a way to do that, then sure, that's no problem. I just I love everything about this. According to a nineteen nineteen biography of Pittman written by Alfred Baker, quote, the Pitmanic system was introduced to the world quietly and without advertisement. As far as can be discovered, its author engaged in no special efforts to make it known. He was indeed far more concerned in affecting improvements in his work for the contemplated second edition. Pittman called this first edition a feeler to see how it was received, and he was continuing to teach it as school and work on revisions for all this time, this wasn't his only focus. Two years after the first edition of Cinographics Soundhand was released, Pittman moved to Bath and started another school there. One possible draw was the Swedenborgian Church that had been established there, which Isaac and Mary joined right after the move. Isaac meanwhile was preparing a second edition of the book, which he wanted to have a catchier title. He and Bagster landed at phonography, a new name, new thing. According to Bagster. Yeah, there's a whole interesting account of them kind of landing at that word and Isaac being like, that's not really a word yet, and Bagster's like, right, because we're gonna make it a word, because no one knows how to describe this kind of shorthand. So while this may have had a quiet start. By eighteen forty six, Isaac's shorthand phonography system had become quite popular. This was because, in part in eighteen thirty nine, a uniform postage law was passed in the UK called the Penny Postage Law, and it went into effect in eighteen forty and that law stated that any letter could be sent for one penny, and Pittman was ready for this change. He had made a penny plate laid out in his system in a very abbreviated way, that he could mail to school headmasters to get them interested in phonography. They could also per a note He included share this with students if they wished, and he he also offered on that brief print the note that quote any person may receive lessons from the author by post gratuitously. He also let people send him their work and their exercises in the system, and he would personally correct any errors and make notations and send it back. This was essentially the beginning of correspondence courses, at least in the modern sense. Incidentally, Pittman got really angry at people who started charging for this same service, even though he had originally planned to do so himself, but he changed his mind and made it free, hoping that that would help entice more people to start using it. But then he was like, you should not get paid a wage to do this. I'll do it all for free, even if I work nineteen hours a day, which is not wise. Next, he arranged lecture tours during school breaks so he could go out and teach people phonography and explain and its usefulness as quote a method of writing all languages by means of signs that express sounds. To prove that, he included exercises in his book that included multiple languages, including the one hundredth Psalm, which he featured in French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Hebrew. He would also have the audience members at his lectures give him dictation in foreign languages so he could write them on a large blackboard in his version of phonography. Realistically, it doesn't quite work in all languages. There are languages that don't have the same sounds in them correct, but it does work well with quite a few of them. Apparently. Yeah, I will confess I have never used it or learned shorthand, but apparently there are a lot of languages that will perfectly fit into this system. But thanks to all of these marketing efforts, Pittman's system did start to catch on, and his writing lesson supplements and books started selling incredibly well. Phonography was reprinted many times to meet this demand, and in eighteen forty six, when it really got popular, he actually shut down the school to use that space for more print facilities. The school morphed at that point and it became the first phonetic institute. He would have to move in the years that followed to larger and larger facilities as demand for phonetic books and information continued to grow and to spread his method even farther than he could. With this new institute, he started a periodical, the Phonetic Journal. During this time, he was also working on another concept, phonetic spelling reform. He was trying to reform spelling in English to a more rational system without all the odd exceptions that are so common. This was sort of a natural follow on from his phonography work, as he ended up printing a second journal, phone Graphic Correspondent. He was the editor. He set in a lecture to the Phonographic Corresponding Society in eighteen forty four quote. Many attempts have been made to reform the errors of our written language, but hitherto without success. There was no desire created in the public mind for a consistent system of orthography. Now, by your benevolent exertions and spreading abroad the truths of phonetic writing, a desire has been created for phonotype, a desire that will increase on that which it feeds. He collaborated with mathematician Alexander John Ellis on creating the English phonotypic alphabet, which never really caught on, much like all of the other attempts to make English phonetically spelled. Yeah, there is in the note for this episode a link to one of his publications that is typeset phonetically and it is one of the hardest things I have ever tried to make my way through. Admittedly some of that is just me, but I'm curious if anybody wants to go look for these to see how they do. On April twenty first, eighteen sixty one, Isaac got married a second time, this time to a woman named Isabella Masters. His first wife, Mary, had died in eighteen fifty four, but the specifics of her passing kind of eluded me. His brother's biography even mentions it only in passing and actually references Isaac's feelings for another woman. We'll talk about that a little bit behind the scenes. On Friday, Isaac and Isabella welcomed their first child, Alfred, a year after the wedding, and then a second son, Ernest, was born in eighteen sixty four. By the end of the eighteen fifties, Isaac had started setting aside money to save up for a purpose built facility to house his institute. He eventually bought a block of buildings at auction in eighteen seventy three. For this project, we hired architect Frederick John Williams to design the new building, which made use of some of the existing structures on the lot. The resulting building was four floors plus a basement. When it was complete, Isaac fitted it out with the latest printing technology, a steam powered press. His staff had a steep learning curve with it, and there were innumerable stumbling blocks to keeping it up and running. And then it was also so loud that a neighbor made a noise complaint. It turned out that running a press was really challenging, but he did stay in the printing business, and eventually he moved into creating a larger publishing company. When his sons reached adulthood, Isaac formed a publishing house with them called Isaac Pittman and Sons. They printed the various books and study materials that Isaac designed, and then eventually expanded into a more generalized education press. That press continued into the twentieth century, and then it was eventually purchased by another publisher in the nineteen eighties, so it went on for a long time. Less than a decade after starting the publishing company with his sons, Isaac Pittman was knighted in eighteen ninety four. Two years after that, in the autumn of eighteen ninety six, the papers reported that Sir Isaac was quite ill with a quote congestion of the lungs. He continued on for several months, sometimes rallying some energy, but mostly having to stay in bed. He was pragmatic about his health. He wrote to his brother, quote, I must expect a continual decrease of strength until the heart gives its last pulsation, and the angelic messengers who wait on the dying draw out the spiritual body from this one. Then I shall have a sound heart and get to work in my new sphere of life. His eighty fifth birthday party was celebrated with his friends at home the following January. He was very weakened at this point, but he was still managing the details of his press from a wheelchair. He made all of the arrangements for his January publications before his death on January twenty second, eighteen ninety seven, at the age of eighty four. He had sent a note shortly before he passed to his minister which read quote, to those who ask how Isaac Pittman passed away, say peacefully and with no more concern than in passing from one room into another, to take up some further employment. Many years after Isaac Pittman created his system, he gave a lecture in which he talked about the genesis of his method and his ongoing efforts to refine it through use, which included quote, the shorthand alphabet given in the first edition of Phonography contains the elements of the present matured system, but in several of its details, it was imperfect because it proceeded from a finite mind. These imperfections were discovered by experience and removed as a skillful anatomist can from three or four bones construct the entire skeleton of an animal. So from three or four shorthand signs or letters that have been acknowledged from the commencement of shorthand writing is the best. For certain letters, we can construct a natural shorthand alphabet. Pittman shorthand lives on. It remains one of the three most popular shorthand systems in the world, alongside the Greg method, which came up just a few decades after him, and the t Line methods. I found him to be such a fascinating creature. M hmmm, I have very joyous email to read. Oh good, this is very very joyous to me personally. So this is from our listener Hannah, who writes has nothing to do with history. Get ready. Hello. Following up on my email from quite a while ago. Thank you so much to Holly for all the advice about Galaxy's Edge. Our original trip got postponed by quite a bit, but we finally made it to Disney this week and even got to do a full five day trip. We did rope drop early access hours. We were even the first in line to scan into the park and we spent twelve full hours in Galaxies Edge. I cannot wait to go back again. It was the coolest experience ever. I could live there if they would let me. We were able to ride Rise of the Resistance three times, truly the most amazing ride I have ever been on, even ties with the Haunted Mansion. For me, Hannah, we're neck and neck. We feel the same. Smuggler's Run was accepting parties of two in their single rider cue and we walked on the ride six times in one hour. I got pilot once and crashed the Millennium Falcon. I'm so proud of you. Uh Ogus Cantina was fantastic and I want to recreate their cocktails at home now. Ronto Roasters and Docking Bay were so delicious, and I had to exercise so much self control to not buy all of the merch. Thank you again for all your advice, and I hope you get to go to galaxy He's Edge again soon too. Hannah and then Hannah sent pictures of their trip and they look so delighted and joyous, and it makes my heart so happy. I'm actually going to Galaxies Edge in a couple of days. With my best friend because I'm spoiled I, as Tracy knows, sometimes I work from Galaxy's Edge. Sometimes I just decide I'm going to work for Galaxy's Edge tomorrow and I we're close enough it's a forty five minute flight, and go down there, bring my laptops and in Toronto roasters and type while I while I eat delicious things. It's a great, great way to live. That is thanks to many Kajillian business trips giving me all of the all of the sky miles on Earth. I can just be like I'm going goodbye. I hope everybody gets to do things like that that delight them. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me, Hannah. It made me so happy and made my heart very joyous to know that you had a time as good as I hope for you. So I hope you to go back again. I too, would love to live there. If you would like to write to us about your vacation's historical or Star Wars or otherwise, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show. It's so easy. You could do it in the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. 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