The true origin of rapid shorthand writing is involved in doubt. It has been attributed to the ancient Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, and the ancient people of Slavonia, by as many different historians; the claim in favor of the Romans being, however, much stronger and more fully verified than those of other nations.

The first shorthand writer among the Romans was Marcus Tullius Tiro, a freedman of Cicero's, who is said to have compiled a system and used it successfully B. C. 63. Tiro taught his system to the government scribes of that day, and by them it was, in turn, imparted to their successors. After the conquest of England by the Romans, it was transplanted to British soil, undergoing but few modifications up to the seventeenth century, when J. Willis, 1602, the first modern shorthand writer of eminence, made considerable alterations in the alphabet and in the application of its junctures. Mr. Willis was followed by numerous authors, many of whom, however, dropped some of their immediate predecessors' and substituted Tiro's original characters; so that, in looking over the alphabets of modern writers, we find many who make use of several of the original Tironian characters. Carstairs, in 1829, employs a Tironian T, and even as late as 1871, Scovil holds to the original Tironian C, more than eighteen hundred years since Cicero's noted secretary invented it.

All systems of shorthand were, however, until the present century, merely stenographies, (as Scovil's, Cross' and some others are today), and being stenographies, therefore devoid of many advantages of speed and legibility peculiar to the phonographic systems, all stenographies being, in addition, very difficult to learn, most of them requiring from five to ten years to master their many word-signs, with which all systems of stenography, ancient or modern, are encumbered.

The first complete shorthand system, having a phonographic basis, was invented by Mr. Phineas Bailey, of Chelsea, Vermont, 1819, who it is said, upon communicating his discovery to the English Parliamentary reporters, produced such a sensation respecting the feasibility of phonographic writing, that several of those gentlemen gave much of their spare time to experimenting on Mr. Bailey's scheme, such experiments and exchange of ideas eventually leading to the formation of a shorthand improvement club, the forerunner of the first phonographic association of England, of which association Mr, Isaac Pitman, then a tutor in a private academy at Wooten-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, became a member, because of his interest in stenographic matters.

Mr. Bailey called his system of phonetic shorthand "A Pronouncing Stenography," and it is to that little work, which its author explains in its title, to be "a complete system of shorthand writing, governed by the knowledge of sounds," that all present systems of phonography owe their origin.

The members of the first phonographic association of England, thinking it wise to publish their phonographic conclusions, Mr. Isaac Pitman, having intimate business relations with Samuel Baxter & Sons, the noted Bible publishers, became their spokesman, or editor, and arranged with Baxter & Sons to publish the suggestions of the association, which suggestions, under Mr. Pitman's editorship, were first published in the form of a diminutive pamphlet, entitled "Stenographic Sound-hand." The name "Phonography" was not given to Mr. Pitman's publication until a later edition, the name being, most probably, taken from the publication of a French author, who, after Bailey's publication, and before Pitman's, issued, in France, a work which he entitled "Phonographie," and which was, as far as investigations have gone, a sort of a combination of the phonetic and the stenographic principles.

Thus, by the above facts, it will be seen that Isaac Pitman, (whom so many supposed to be the "father of phonography") in reality not only did not invent phonetic shorthand, but was not even the first to use the word "phonography" (or "phonographie") as a term for the art. Much credit, however, is due him for his labors in the phonographic field, which have been by no means slight; though, while we acknowledge his labors, we must not forget the real inventor, Mr. Phineas Bailey, nor those from whom Mr. Pitman procured the material for his first publication-the members of England's first phonographic association; nor, in later days, Mr. Pitman's numerous associates in business, who are said to have suggested to him most of the principles of abbreviation which form what has been known as his system for many years.

Accuracy of statement is one of the requisites of historical record, and such accuracy gives to Marcus Tullius Tiro, a Roman, the right of title as "the father of shorthand writing;" Mr. Phineas Bailey, an American, the right of title as the "inventor of sound-writing," (i. e.. phonography) and first publisher of the art; Mr. Isaac Pitman, the first English publisher of the latter art, and the spokesman through whom the public obtained a knowledge of the improvements made in the art by Isaac Pitman and his co-laborers up to 1855. Even at this latter date, however, much of the stenographic material of the early writers is made use of in all systems of phonography, although such stenographic material is used phonetically, and, being used phonetically, has thereby shortened the method of writing, and done away with numerous arbitrary word-forms.

So popular, since its invention by Mr. Phineas Bailey, in 1819, has phonography become, that many authors of phonographic works have succeeded the inventor, though up to the publication of this volume, most of the objections to the Pitman scheme are retained in other works; many authors seeming to care more for reproducing old ideas, than for printing new discoveries.

Finding the old scheme, even as presented by other modern authors still defective in many ways, the members of the profession were, before the publication of this volume, compelled to make many changes in the use of the art in their own work, and such of those changes (hitherto secrets of the profession) that really further speed as well as legibility, the author publishes in this work, in addition to the author's own copyrighted improvements, which are not to be found in the publication of any other writer.