Isaac Pitman
| Sir Isaac Pitman | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
4 January 1813 Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England |
| Died | 22 January 1897 (aged 84) |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Pitman shorthand |
| Children | Ernest Pitman, Alfred Pitman |
Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897), was an English teacher who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. He was also the vice president of the Vegetarian Society. Pitman was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894.
Pitman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire in England. One of his cousins was Abraham Laverton. In 1831 he had five months training at the Training College of the British and Foreign School Society, which was sufficient to qualify him as a teacher. He started teaching at Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire. In 1835 he married a widow, and moved in 1836 to Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he started his own school. In 1839 he moved to Bath, where he opened a small school.
In the 1851 census he appears in Bath aged 38, living with his wife, Mary, aged 58, born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. He married Isabella Masters in 1861, and he appears in the 1871 census, aged 58, with his new wife Isabella, aged 46.
Isaac Pitman was a lifelong advocate of spelling reform for the English language, producing many pamphlets during his lifetime on spelling reform. His motto was "time saved is life gained".
One of the outcomes of his interest in spelling reform was the creation of his system of phonetic shorthand which he first published in 1837, in a pamphlet titled Sound-Hand. Among the examples in this pamphlet, were the Psalm 100, the Lord's Prayer, and Swedenborg's Rules of Life.
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