Thomas Shelton (stenographer)

Thomas Shelton (* 1600/ 01 perhaps in the county of Norfolk, † 1650 ( ) in London? ) Was an English stenographer and the inventor of the most widely used in English-speaking shorthand of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Life

Thomas Shelton taught from the early 1620s until his death early in 1650 probably shorthand in London. About his background and education, nothing certain is known, but it has been suggested that he could have come from the well-known family Shelton, who owned much land in the county of Norfolk. His birth year 1600/ 01 can be tapped from the fact that the issue of his " flowmetry " from 1647 contains a portrait of him, on which his age is given as 46. As inter alia, from the dedications of his books shows Shelton was the English Civil War on the side of the Parliament; his religious sympathy was Puritanism. Shelton must have known, since he took her geometric rationale for his own shorthand stenography by John Willis.

Work

Shelton invented a new stenographic system and published it in 1626 in the book " Short - Writing" ( in later editions since 1635 under the name " Tachygraphy ", ancient Greek for " shorthand "). In Shelton's shorthand system, each consonant was expressed by a simple icon that sometimes still had similarity with the underlying letters.

Vowels have been designated by the height of the following consonants. So that meant B icon with directly above written L symbol "ball", while the B symbol including " bull" signified with the L symbol. The B icon with the L symbol meant top right " bell", right in the middle "bill", bottom right " boll ". A vowel at the end of a word is indicated by a dot in the appropriate position. For initial vowels, there were additional symbols. Add more icons for common prefixes and suffixes, as well as consonant clusters came.

One drawback of Shelton's shorthand was that vowels and diphthongs could not be distinguished. So could the "bat " designation as " bait" or " bate ", the "bot" designation also "boot" or mean "boat ". This could be decided only from the context. An advantage of the system was relatively easy to learn. This led 1626-1710 to more than 20 editions of the " flowmetry ". A French edition appeared in 1681 in Paris and a German edition in 1743 in Leipzig. But decades earlier, in 1679, Charles Aloysius Ramsay had published a German shorthand system based on Shelton, without slavishly imitate him.

Shelton's shorthand was used, inter alia, by Samuel Pepys in his famous secret diaries and Sir Isaac Newton. Even U.S. President Thomas Jefferson still used a simple form of Shelton's shorthand.

Probably invented in response to unauthorized pirated editions of his " flowmetry " and published Shelton in his probable death in 1650 still a whole new shorthand system, which he called " Zeiglographia " and that should be even faster. At that time, for example, sermons were often mitstenografiert; therefore the Zeiglographie contained some special shortcuts for frequently used expressions in sermons, for example, the letter symbols of " lvg " for "love of God" were. However, this stenographic system was not as popular as his flowmetry.