Stenography, Polygraphy, and Elliptical Steno-Photography

The business of getting things down in writing accurately and yet with the speed of oral discourse has stretched man's talents and ingenuity for hundreds of years. Thanks to the generosity of Douglas Gersten the Library now holds a fine collection of more than 500 books tracing the history of that search from 1687 to the recent past. Strongest in English and American titles, the collection nonetheless includes the work of Dutch, French, German, Russian, and Spanish stenographic writers. Among the earlier volumes in the collection are the influential systems of James Weston (Stenography, 1727, "universally approv'd of, for the use of learners of the art") and Aulay Macaulay's Polygraphy or Short-Hand (1747), as well as William Addy's shorthand Bible (1687) and Weston's Book of Common Prayer (1730).

The collection is strongest in materials from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as might be expected, but even among these more standard items there are some of particular note, such as early Canadian titles and one of the stenographic treatises of Alexander Melville Bell (Alexander Graham Bell's father), the formidably named Elliptical Steno-Phonography (1869). Rounding out the collection are partial runs of a number of periodicals, including the first eight numbers of Oliver McEwan's Shorthand Notes & Queeries (1893), and a number of reference books, of which the most important is the catalog by Brown and Haskell, The Shorthand Collection in the New York Public Library (1935).