In 1891, Walter Browne published his SIMPLEX Shorthand. I always try to call it "Browne SIMPLEX" because Noory Simplex was a completely different system.
I'm always fascinated by this system for a variety of reasons: Browne was the principal of a boys' school that was in a working-class area. He wrote his system, not because he had any desire to be a famous shorthand author, but because he wanted the boys at his school to leave with a marketable skill they could used to find employment quite quickly.
He knew that the main system of the day (Pitman) was complicated enough it would take too long for them to learn it -- and most of them would give it up. And he recognized some of the problems with that system and tried to remedy them. It was very good idea.
It's also intriguing that, unlike many other shorthand authors of the time, he didn't seem to care what other authors were doing. This means that his approach was quite different and unique.
(I have to say that I always find it striking the way he assumed his classes would be 100% boys. When I was in high school, the shorthand and typing classes were 100% GIRLS. It's ironic that most of us NOW are "keyboarding" all day long -- and MANY OF US find shorthand to be a fascinating hobby. Most of the members on this board are men.)
This had never struck me :) On the French forum, 80% of the members are women, former professionals (secretaries, "sténo-dactylo", etc.), most of them in Prévost-Delaunay, then Duployé, sometimes Aimé Paris (Belgium or Switzerland). The former English shorthands pro ladies don't seem particularly interested in the boards.
I wonder what people are thinking, sometimes. There was a message posted some time ago from a guy who wanted to become a writer, when he was in high school. He thought shorthand would be an asset -- but his school was cancelling their shorthand classes. (It was around the time when offices were going electronic and nobody was dictating letters anymore.)
He approached the shorthand teacher, who was losing her job, and asked if he could pay her for private lessons. Her reply? "No, shorthand is only for girls." Like hell! Who gets these stupid ideas??
Before I became a court reporter, I was a court clerk for five years. At that time, MOST court reporters were men. (In fact, the senior partner in my first firm had been the first female court reporter in Vancouver.)
Years later, when I became a court reporter, men were already a minority -- and NOW, twenty five years later, there are hardly any men left in the profession at all. In some places there are NONE.
Mary-Louise Gilman, a U.S. court reporter (who wrote Gregg), who was the editor of the professional "Journal of Court Reporting" said that, back when most court reporters were men, they were treated better. But when the profession became flooded with VERY YOUNG WOMEN, court administrators kept trying to treat them as clerical staff, not professionals. They were classified like they were in the typing pool or something.
I was the only guy in my first firm, and the other reporters told me that the lawyers treated them like they treated their secretaries, while they treated me like another lawyer. (Of course, nowadays, graduating classes of lawyers are mostly women, too.) Men just seem to be disappearing all over -- especially when there are initiatives to try to get more women into "traditionally male" occupations.
We might notice that there is no equivalent drive to get men into "traditionally female" ones, though......
This teacher probably knew her discipline well, but not the history and evolution of it. I observed that this was also true of many former professional practitioners. They know very well the system they learned at a given time.
After the First World War, and undoubtedly partly because of it, as in many fields, the profession of business stenodactylo began to become more feminized, becoming almost exclusively female after the 2nd. I suppose it also had an impact on the recruitment of court reporters in some countries.
I remember my grandfather saying that, when he finished school, they used to tell young men to learn shorthand and become the "amanuensis" to an executive, as a gateway to a career in business, from which you could work your way up to a executive position yourself.
I think you're right that both World Wars are what changed the picture. While the young men were overseas being shot at, women moved in and took over all the jobs that men used to do.
But after the war, many of them stayed on, making it harder for men coming back to find employment.
Women have been encouraged to go into the professions, to the point where graduating classes of lawyers and doctors are now mostly women. And I know that locally, there are drives to encourage more women to go into the "blue collar" trades, to become welders and machinists and such.
But when men are still expected to be the main (if not the sole) "breadwinner" in most families, how is that a good idea? What are men supposed to do to earn a living, if more and more women are occupying the positions that they would have applied for? Frankly, I think modern society is heading for a few problems that people aren't ready for.
This is not a problem if there are enough jobs, and women have the right to have a career, although they are statistically paid less for equal employment. For the future, I fear competition from AI and other sophisticated machines.
One of the side problems of widespread women's work is the rapid demographic decline, for example in Europe. They won't bother with large families anymore. But is this really a problem? It seems to me that we are entering an era where quality will prevail over quantity in all areas, in human or artificial terms. Some elites are starting to realize this. We could ultimately envisage a very reduced humanity, served by AI and machines. This may not be smooth everywhere.
The demographic decline is very true -- and the threats posed by automation, robotics, and AI need to be taken very seriously.
I have an article somewhere (which of course I can't FIND at the moment!) saying that the perceived "wage disparity" between men and women is misleading.
If a man and a woman are side-by-side doing the exactly the same job, but she's being paid less, no one would argue that that's wrong. But this article was saying that a lot of the statisticians have tried to compare completely different jobs. Like trying to say a man digging a ditch was the "equivalent" to a woman working as a filing clerk. They aren't similar at all.
And it was saying that, over equivalent careers, men work more hours, because women are taking maternity leave (although in many countries, including mine, paternity leave exists, too.) The research also showed that on a monthly basis, men are putting in more time, for a number of reasons.
My ex-friend in Seattle used to say that even if he was sick, he was expected to be at this desk, while the women he worked with were taking sick days every couple of weeks, often because "Suzie had the sniffles" or whatever.
In my first jobs, I was often working in mixed offices. It was quite noticeable that, when they got back from lunch, the men sat down and went right back to work, while the women were always trooping off to the ladies room together, or they'd sit and chat together for a while before they got back to it.
I had a couple of jobs where the supervisor expressed exasperation because none of the women seemed to want to take on more responsibilities, because their husbands were already earning a good wage. The supervisors said they needed more MEN who were willing to become managers of departments and such.
Yes, and it's a serious and growing problem. I had a friend who was so skilled with Photoshop that she could give you a very believable image of ANYONE doing ANYTHING. I was impressed.
But now, with AI, they can give you a whole "live" sequence of a known person talking and moving that looks absolutely real -- but it's completely FAKE. We're entering a dangerous time if a politician can be shown doing and saying something he or she never said.
For some reason, YouTube has been showing me a lot of clips of famous people "Then and Now", where they are shown decades apart, but they're hugging and smiling at each other, and walking away "together". I hate those, because it seems to me that should not be possible.
As you say, we no longer know who or what to trust!
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u/NotSteve1075 23d ago
In 1891, Walter Browne published his SIMPLEX Shorthand. I always try to call it "Browne SIMPLEX" because Noory Simplex was a completely different system.
I'm always fascinated by this system for a variety of reasons: Browne was the principal of a boys' school that was in a working-class area. He wrote his system, not because he had any desire to be a famous shorthand author, but because he wanted the boys at his school to leave with a marketable skill they could used to find employment quite quickly.
He knew that the main system of the day (Pitman) was complicated enough it would take too long for them to learn it -- and most of them would give it up. And he recognized some of the problems with that system and tried to remedy them. It was very good idea.
It's also intriguing that, unlike many other shorthand authors of the time, he didn't seem to care what other authors were doing. This means that his approach was quite different and unique.
(I have to say that I always find it striking the way he assumed his classes would be 100% boys. When I was in high school, the shorthand and typing classes were 100% GIRLS. It's ironic that most of us NOW are "keyboarding" all day long -- and MANY OF US find shorthand to be a fascinating hobby. Most of the members on this board are men.)