PITMAN SHORTHAND: THE WORLD RECORD SYSTEM
By John W. Harrell
Introduction
The greatest speed and accuracy records writing and reading shorthand throughout all time have been made by Pitman
writers, — proving conclusively that the Pitman System gives to the writer greater speed capacity and greater accuracy
in reading than any other System in existence.
It follows therefore, that just as the Pitman System gives to the most expert writers greater speed and accuracy than
any other system, it gives to the novice, or the average shorthand writer greater speed and accuracy than he could
develop with any other system.
Therefore, knowing as we do that one hundred words a minute is about the average speed attained by most stenographers,
and that it is necessary to be able to write about one hundred words a minute to hold an average stenographic position,
we can readily understand why more than eighty-five per cent of the stenographers employed by the Government and in
every Department of Commercial and Professional Service are Pitman Writers.
The United States Government employs 1579 Stenographers in the nine departments at Washington and 1356 of them are
Pitman Writers, — more than 85%.
The World's Best Record learning Pitman Shorthand was made by students of this "World Record Course."
Excerpt
Without any previous knowledge of any system of shorthand, Miss Ruby Slaton and Miss Hazel Minor learned Pitman
Shorthand by the Harrell Method so thoroughly within three months that they took their final examinations separately —
unfamiliar matter dictated at a speed of one hundred words a minute — their shorthand notes were exchanged, and each
transcribed the other's shorthand notes thus written rapidly without assistance, and there was not an error in the
transcript of either.
To make the test more rigid and severe, and to subject them to all of the embarrassment incident to a first experience
as stenographer in a business office — the crucial test of a stenographer's competency — they were sent separately to
the offices of The Franklin Life Insurance Company where the Cashier, Mr. Frank Reedy, a stranger to them, selected from
his files the letters of which photographic reductions are shown on the following pages, dictated one of them to Miss
Hazel Minor and the other to Miss Ruby Slaton. Neither of the young ladies heard the dictation to the other. Mr. Reedy
took their shorthand notes as soon as they were written and exchanged them. Without any assistance whatever from each
other or otherwise, and with no previous knowledge whatever of the nature or the contents of the letter either had to
transcribe, they transcribed each other's shorthand notes rapidly and without error. . .
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