Aulay Macaulay

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Aulay Macaulay (* before 1747, † after 1756; exact dates of life unknown) from Scotland developed and invented a shorthand system that went down in shorthand history under the name of the author. No further details are known about his life outside of his shorthand work.

System description and publications

Cover picture of the Polygraphy edition from 1747: A sermon is stenographed by church attendants in Aulay Macaulay's system.

In 1747 (1st and 2nd edition in the same year) he published his "Polygraphy" and stated that he had studied previous systems in detail, but that in his opinion they were all difficult to learn and difficult to read and that they had an unclear set of rules . For this reason, after several years of work, he wanted to publish his own system.

Aulay Macaulay's "Polygraphy" belongs to the so-called geometric shorthand systems, because the letters were formed from points, straight lines, ellipses and circles (or parts of them). Macaulay is the inventor and founder of the vowel writing direction in Great Britain. The vowels were written literally throughout and not, as in the previous systems, indicated by symbolism on the following consonant sign (e.g. by reducing the size and changing position or by dots at certain points). Macaulay gave the vowels their own small characters, which he combined with the ends of the preceding consonants to form uniform syllables. Thus, his system belongs to the so-called joined vowels systems.

Alphabet characters are also characters for words

Macaulay also used three different sizes in two positions for vowels, consonants and consonant connections for the first time. So meant z. For example, the flat bar either a, i or h depending on the length, and then also gl, pr or gr depending on the length. Thus, the same characters on and above the line had different meanings. The consequence, however, was that words had to be interrupted because the characters on the line were not on the same level and could not be connected with each other. Macaulay had to z. B. write: In the beginn ing god crea ted the hea ven and the ea rth. The different phonetic signs also had additional word meanings at the same time. His shorthand system was divided into two parts. On his "longhand" he built a "shorthand".

In the third edition of his "Polygraphy", which he published in 1756 , Aulay Macaulay gave up the multiple meanings arising from the position within the line as impractical. He wanted to remedy the complaints because of the ambiguity of the different positions of the letters. Macaulay had now created a single-line alphabet. This third edition also showed the influence of the important system inventor John Byrom (1692–1763) in the ring marks and quarter circles .

In Macaulay's publications, the many reading exercises stand out compared to the textbooks of other system inventors of his time. So he transferred various psalms and texts from the 1st book of Moses from the Old Testament into Macaulay's shorthand system. In the second and third edition of his "Polygraphy" he had 13 witnesses named with profession and address confirm that he taught a boy at the age of eight years his shorthand in four lessons so that he would read and read it so fluently afterwards could write like conventional script. Macaulay asked for a guinea for a lesson .

The word "Polygraphy" created by Aulay Macaulay should mean that his shorthand was in his opinion transferable to all languages ​​("fitted to all languages" according to the title page). As an example, the 117th Psalm was written in shorthand in eight languages, namely in Welsh , Dutch , French , Spanish , Italian , Latin , Ancient Greek and Hebrew .

Used by Franz Freiherr von Fürstenberg

The most well-known practical user of Macaulay's shorthand in German-speaking countries was the most important statesman in the Principality of Münster , Franz Freiherr von Fürstenberg (1729-1810). He kept his diaries in French and partly in English. Since 1761 he used the system of Aulay Macaulay, which he was very good at, for the French language. Baron von Fürstenberg redesigned this system in the further course of his diary. In particular, he abolished the third lengths for l, v and w and replaced them with dots. He realized that three sizes of a character shape, each with a different sound meaning, are too indistinct for readability. Freiherr von Fürstenberg also created his own list of abbreviations with shorthand stenographic forms for common words and syllables.

Professor and government councilor Ernst Ahnert (1859–1945), who was also involved in the creation of the German unified shorthand, translated Baron von Fürstenberg's diary entries into longhand around 1912 . These transmissions represent contemporary cultural documents of immeasurable value. Ahnert paid tribute to the stenographer Fürstenberg and his application and further development of Aulay Macaulay's system with the following words: "The important man who is admirable in so many fields has already got a place in the history of shorthand, as one of the first to cultivate art on German soil and as one who borrowed a writing system from a foreign people, filled it with new ideas and now used it almost as his own intellectual work for a second foreign language . "

literature

  • Faulmann, Karl : History and literature of shorthand, Vienna 1894
  • Johnen, Christian: General history of shorthand, Berlin 1928, 3rd edition
  • Kaden, Walter: New history of shorthand. From the creation of writing to contemporary shorthand, Dresden 1999
  • Knopka, Peter: Aulay Macaulay, an English system inventor and his German "pupil", in: Deutsche Stenografenzeitung 3/1982, pp. 55–56
  • Mentz, Arthur: History of shorthand, Wolfenbüttel 1949
  • Ders .: History of Stenography, Berlin 1920, 2nd edition
  • Specht, Fritz: The writing and its development to modern stenography, Berlin 1909, 2nd edition

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Macaulay, Aulay
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Inventor of an English shorthand system
DATE OF BIRTH before 1747
DATE OF DEATH after 1756