The public were o captivated with the new system that nine editions of the book, each with improvements, were demanded within fifteen years; and although some one hundred systems have been put on the market in Great Britain since the first appearance of the Isaac Pitman system, it has continued to gain ground very rap idly among them all. An 'official' report made by .Mr. Starr of the Times (London) gives the rela tive standing of the systems used in the British Parliament in 1S95 as: Isaac Pitman, 96; Gur ney, 10; Taylor. 11; Janes, 1; Duployan, 1; Lewis. 2. The popularity of the system is also shown by the large amount of shorthand litera ture published: Two weekly periodicals with a circulation stated to be 35.000 each, from the Bath press; six monthlies of a general character pub lished independently, and one medical journal— all of these in shorthand alone, except The Phonetic Journal, which is partly letterpress.
lished an edition of the system in 1852. A very active propaganda was carried on at this time by these and other publishers, and by Oliver Dyer, who traveled over a large part of the Eastern and Northern States, and into Canada, lecturing on phonography and teaching large classes. In 1853 Benn Pitman, a younger brother of Isaac, came to America, and, with R. B. Prosser, joined the propaganda by publishing The Reporter's Com panion, and, shortly after, The Manual. So far, the system in America had kept pace in altera tions with the several English editions; but a year or two later Andrew J. Graham commenced his series of text-books, in which he introducer] slight changes of his own. His alphabet, as also that of Benn Pitman, remains the same as the Isaac Pitman of 1856; but the latter undergoing a change in its tenth edition by the transposition of two light and two heavy dot vowels, the Benn Pitman and the Graham did not follow; and that, with the change of the letters le, y, and h„ which Isaac Pitman made later, constitutes the prin cipal difference at the present day between these systems and that of Great Britain.
The catalogue of publications now issued through the four publishing houses at Bath, London. New York, and Toronto contains, among other books, I36 of such standard character as the Bible. The Vicar of Wakefield, Tom Brown's School Days, Dickens's Pickwick Papers, etc. Government returns show that, in the year 1895. 91.006 youth were receiving instruction in the Pitman short hand in the United Kingdom, and the text-books of the system have now beqi adopted exclusively for the schools of Greater New York. Isaac Pitman's services were recognized by having a knighthood conferred on him in 1893, three or four years before his death.
In America there are no distinct traces of the public use of shorthand until Stephen Pearl An drews brought the Isaac Pitman system from England in 1844, and planted it on this side of the Atlantic. In Dr. J. Westhy-Gibson's Bibliog raphy of Shorthand, he enumerates 16 editions of Andrews's and Boyle's Complete Phonographic elassbook (Pitman phonography) as published within eight years. Epinetus Webster also pub In I S66 James E. Munson brought out his Complete Phonographer, in which he adopted the Isaac Pitman change of vowels, but re tained the old w and y, and he has a new form of his own for h. Elias Longley followed with his Eclectic, and says, in his Introduction: "As phonography now stands before the public. in this country. it has no generally recognized exponent. It is `Lo! here,' and 'Ix! there.' and nobody knows who is the true phonographic prophet." With the benevolent intention of re storing harmony, he simply adds another varia tion. And so the Pitmanic systems kept on mul tiplying, until now they number anywhere from 30 to 50, all of which, however, may be under stood by a Pitman writer with a few hours' study. The confusion was increased by the in troduction of new systems: Lindsley's Tachy graphy; the Gabelsberger and the Duployan (modified and renamed the Pernin), imported from Germany and France respectively; J. G. Cross's Eclectic; C. E. IMcKee's New Rapid and New Standard; J. R. Gregg's Light-Line; and others less known.
Of the Pitmanic systems, the Berm Pitman has a monthly for its exponent, The Phono graphic Maga.:ine, which is partly in common print and partly in shorthand ; the Graham has The Students' Journal, a monthly, also partly in shorthand. Beyond these and the text-books, with a few booklets for reading exercise, the American Pitman systems have no literature. Of the non-Pitmanic, The Monthly Stenographer represents the Pernin, and The Gregg Writer (monthly) the Gregg system; both of these are partly in the shorthand character of their respec tive systems, besides which they have published only their text-books. The Typewriter and Phonographic World of New York, and The Stenographer of Philadelphia, both monthlies, are cosmopolitan in their shorthand character, and are mostly in common print. The English Isaac Pitman had no propaganda in America. until the branch publishing houses were opened at New York and Toronto in 1890. The official organ of this system in the United States is Pitman's Journal, issued monthly. Shorthand publishing in America is very far behind that of Britain. notwithstanding the vigor with which it started under Andrews, Boyle, Webster, etc.