"[Their] only movement is the dancing of their fingers over the keys of their curious machines..."
Sarah Campbell, The Times (February 8, 2007)
The German inventor Karl Drais (1785-1851) is most famous for inventing the draisine or "running machine," one of the earliest forms of mechanized transport and a precursor of the modern bicycle. But in 1830 he also invented a keyboard system for recording speech that developed into what we now call a stenotype or shorthand machine.
A stenotype (also called shorthand) machine consists of a keyboard of twenty-two letters and numbers that the operator, or stenographer, can press simultaneously to spell out whole syllables, phrases, or words in one action—like playing chords on a piano. Stenographers spell out syllables phonetically, that is by their sound rather than spelling. Broadly speaking, the left-hand fingers are used to produce the initial consonant, the right hand produces the final consonant, and the thumbs generating the vowel sounds in between.
Stenography is able to transcribe spoken words rapidly and became popular in courts of law where it is still the main recording method. A court reporter must write accurately at speeds of around 225 words per minute, although some users can reach up to 300 words a minute (five words per second). Stenographers develop their own conventions in using their machines, so that one may not even be able to read another's output.
