#stenotype

“Head of Huge Reporting Service - SHE POUNDED THE KEYS TO POWER,” Montreal Star. November 11, 1932. Page 12. --- President of Master Reporting Service Gives Useful Hints to Job Hunters ---- MRS. FANNY S. SWEENEY knows what is going on In the world. In fact, she knows almost more about It than any other woman anywhere and most of their husbands and brothers. 

For she is the president of the Master Reporting Service Her representative sit at small tables all over the world where important things are happening and record them on their stenotype. When the event is particularly outstanding, Mrs Sweeney herself is present. 

She has covered more than 50,000 convention through her agency She also covers prisa fights broadcasts funeral sermons, speeches, business salons— anything and everything. 

AN AMBITIOUS MAIDEN But once upon a time she was just an eager-eyed girl who wished she could get more speed in making hieroglyphics in her note book. Somebody suggested her a circular which said that a stenotype could writ faster than shorthand. She doubted it. But she went to the demonstration that was advertised and ended by enrolling for a course in stenotypy.

"It was miles ahead of me,” she said. “In 1914, I won the gold medal of the National Reporters' Shorthand Association of the United States, I started to report lecture sermons all sorts of thing because I didn't want to lose my speed. I finally tried a convention." 

After that she hired some assistants and then incorporated. That was 18 years ago. Today she has a New York office that occupies one whole half block in a skyscraper and has a staff of 30 stenotype reporter. She has smaller offices in Chicago and Cleveland. 

She performs personal services for the people who employ her to preserve thelr speeches and business. She will also correct English if asked. Searching for jobs Is a task that will tax anyone’ resourcefulness, she admits, but she has certain rules that will help the applicant. 

“First of all, if you are making a personal contact make an excellent appearance as possible. Then strike a happy medium between being over-expansive, over-confident and over-timid and subservient.

"If you are an older woman, do not give the impression that you are either dictatorial or motherly. Keep slender, too, because too much flesh gives the Impression of middle age, stolidity and settledness.’

If you are mailing an application, she again has helpful suggestions. 

"Type your letter, arranging the page artistically. Make sure that your spelling and English are correct. Simple words, not flowery ones, will help you. Do not give too many names of places where you have formerly worked. Three or four are enough."

I mean, it’s pretty frigging impressive, but I’m beginning to hit the wall on a couple of things:

I’m already at the stage where reading about this shit isn’t enough, I should really start committing, and that involves money I don’t really have available.

I never got the hang of— okay, I’ll admit it, I managed to get past secondary school without ever learning how to solder properly, despite the fact that we had Kemahiran Hidup in my school.

None of this shit is easy to get in Malaysia. The best I can tell, either I swallow the cost by paying for shipping and getting killed by the exchange rate by buying stuff online (and I might not make it anyway, because they don’t accept payment from Malaysia), or I go through AliExpress and TaoBao, which is a daunting prospect, since I don’t really read or speak Chinese.

That being said, I mean, look at this shit. This looks amazing, and yeah, you could program this to accept steno input: