Fast forward 20,000 years to history’s first recorded shorthand reporter, Marcus Tullius Tiro. Freed from slavery, he became Cicero’s secretary, and in the year 63 B.C., used a metal stylus to report a speech by Cato.

Roman uses, drawing on Greek systems, began with the caesars and flourished, apparently under the emperors. Julius Caesar, a shorthand writer, reportedly was stabbed with his own stylus.

Under the Holy Roman Empire, shorthand was declared necromantic and diabolical. Its decline was reversed, apparently, in Renaissance, Reformation and Restoration-era England when its use spread for recording preachers’ sermons and dialogue in stage plays.

In 1588 Dr. Timothie Bright authored the first practical system of shorthand published in the English language. Dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, Bright’s system had no alphabet and consisted of more than 500 arbitrary characters that had to be memorized.

Of all the notable people who have learned shorthand, no other has ever left so graphic an account of his struggle to master what Charles Dickens called “The noble art and mystery of shorthand”. Author Charles Dickens reported sessions of Parliament using the Gurney system and even had a character in David Copperfield say that shorthand “was equal to the mastery of six languages.”

Every shorthand writer who has read the full account in David Copperfield of the battle Dickens had in learning a difficult system of shorthand without the help of a teacher will be grateful that his or her introduction to verbatim reporting was so much less of a struggle. Finally, however, Dickens became known as one of the best verbatim reporters of his day, and his services were wanted all over England – and this at the age of 18.

In 1837, the same year Queen Victoria ascended the English throne, Isaac Pitman developed his system of phonetically based shorthand. Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England he is undoubtedly the “Father of Phonographic Shorthand”. Benn, brother of Isaac, showed what Pitman shorthand could do being himself a reporter of note. He reported the trial of the assassin of President Lincoln, as well as many important and famous trials of that era. Benn Pitman was known in later years as “The Grand Old Man of Shorthand in America.”

Pitman’s system was continually revised, not only by himself but by scores of others, and was the premier system of shorthand for decades. While its use declined in the United States because of the advent of Gregg Shorthand and then development of the shorthand machine, With the diminishing use of Pitman in the United States it is sometimes overlooked that the system is still the predominant shorthand in England and all the former British territories. Pitman shorthand is undoubtedly a universal system, having been adapted to at least 30 languages, including French, Spanish, Welsh, Afrikaans, Malay and Hindu. The phonetic base and the solid structure of the system have made this wide adaptability possible.

John Robert Gregg was born on June 17, 1867 in the Irish village of Rockcorry, County Monaghan. He was the youngest of five children. John’s lessons began at the age of 10. He first mastered the Taylor system of shorthand and then tackled the Pitman system. By 1888 Gregg had established his own shorthand school. He moved to the United States in 1893 and established schools in Boston.

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other politicians in British and early republic America used shorthand for diverse purposes. Using a personally developed shorthand, for example, Madison voluntarily recorded the 1787 Constitutional Convention while actively participating in it. He commented that the job nearly killed him.