Tuesday 11 December 2007

Improving productivity

Sir Edward Watkin claimed the credit for first using shorthand in business practice. In 1853, as general manager of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, he required that all his apprentice clerks learn Pitmans shorthand



Watkin pointed out that whereas he had once half killed himself with work, writing his own business correspondence in longhand or dictating to clerks who took down his words in longhand, he could now get through the same amount of work in a fraction of the time by having his clerks write in shorthand


Transactions of the 1st International Shorthand Congress Held in London, 1888

No comments: