Sir Isaac Pitman - 1813-1897
4 January 1813 - 12 January 1897

Wotton-under-Edge
Cotswolds

He taught in Wotton-under-Edge, he was Master of the British School in Bear Street.

A Plaque on a house in Orchard Street, Wotton-under-Edge, is a reminder that Isaac Pitman was a schoolteacher in the town and produced his shorthand system that has since become famous the world over.

It was in the year 1837 that the schoolmaster, later to become Sir Isaac Pitman, introduced his system of 'stenographic sound hand'. At the time it is certain that he had no idea he had discovered something that was to revolutionise the world of writing. Pitman is quoted as having once said "I have no intention of becoming a shorthand author".

Pitman was knighted in 1894.

Isaac Pitman - 1813 -1897

Isaac Pitman was born at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, on January 4th, 1813. He was the son of a hand loom weaver and left school in his 13th year. He could not have been a strong boy because it is said that he was subject to fainting fits, caused by the school room being overcrowded. Unlike so many boys of his time, Isaac Pitman was sorry to leave school and asked to be allowed to return. When he found this was impossible he became a clerk in a counting house, but made a point of studying systematically at home, despite the fact that his office hours were from six in the morning until six at night.

In his "Life of Pitman". Mr Alfred Baker says: "He and his brother Jacob rose at four each morning and devoted nearly two hours to their books till they left home to begin the duties of the day. In the evening they gave one or two hours to study." While a schoolmaster at Barton-on-Humber, Isaac Pitman devoted 5,000 hours of his spare time to revising the "Comprehensive Bible." This task occupied him from October 1835 to August 1838. During that time Pitman made no fewer than 500,000 marginal references.

In 1837 Isaac Pitman opened a private school at Wotton-under-Edge, and one of the subjects he taught his scholars was shorthand. At that time he was using Samuel Taylor's system of shorthand. He compiled a small instruction book on this style, and asked a friend (Mr. Bagster to publish it. Mr Bagster suggested that Pitman should compile a new system. A little later, quietly and without advertisement, the Pitman system was introduced to the world, and today it is the most widely used of all the systems of shorthand. It must be learnt by thousands every year. Possible, if Pitmans as a schoolboy had not experienced difficulty in pronouncing certain words the world might never have heard of his system of shorthand. But there were a lot of words he could not pronounce and it was puzzling about this fact which caused him to think about a phonetic writing system. Pitman lived to see the spread of his gospel throughout the land. He died in 1897.

Phonography writing by Sound being also a new Natural System of Shorthand.

View Phonography.
(Download page may take almost 1 minute in order for content to be viewed of a reasonable size)

COTSWOLDS ~ AMY COOK ~ BERKELEY HOUSE ~ ISAAC PITMAN ~ KLB
POST OFFICE ~ WOTTON HIGHWAYMAN ~ THE RAM INN
PHOTO ALBUM ~ SITE INDEX ~ LINKS
sendinfo@cotswoldedge.org.uk
Copyright©2002 Cotswold Edge
All rights reserved.

Web site created by Lynx Designs | Site Awards