Education: Kudos (Concluded)

Concluding their Commencements, U. S. colleges granted honorary degrees to the following:

Bucknell University (Pa.) President William Elgin Wickenden of Case School of Applied Science (Cleveland) D.Sc.

College of Wooster (Ohio) Frederic Lauriston Bullard, chief editorial writer of the Boston Herald Litt.D.

Harvard President Karl Taylor Compton of M. I. T. LL.D. Seymour Parker Gilbert, onetime Agent General for Reparations LL.D. Frederick Perry Fish, patent lawyer, onetime (1901-07) President of American Bell Telephone Co. and American Telephone & Telegraph Co. LL.D. Orville Wright, pioneer aviator LL.D.

Middlebury College (Vt.) President James Lukens McConaughy of Wesleyan University LL.D.

Mount Union College (Alliance, Ohio) H. W. Hoover (carpet sweepers) D.B.A.

University of Pittsburgh Dean Gordon Jennings Laing of the University of Chicago Graduate school LL.D. Director Edward Ray Weidlein of the Mellon Institute Sc.D. Samuel M. Kintner, research director and assistant vice president of Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co Sc.D. Director Hebet Doust Curtis of the University of Pittsburgh Allegheny Observatory Sc.D.

Also notable among the scholars, politicians, benefactors whose conventional citations for honorary degrees graced last week’s Commencements, was that which accompanied a C. S. D. (Doctor of Commercial Science) given by Boston University to John Robert Gregg, creator of the Gregg Shorthand System, “pioneer and outstanding contributor to the development of commercial education; originator of a system of shorthand that has become world-wide in its use, and which has conspired with the art of typewriting to revolutionize the economic outlook of young women everywhere.”

Forty-two years ago in Liverpool, John Robert Gregg decided that the existing methods of shorthand writing were too complicated. He invented and for five years taught a system of his own. Later in Boston, later in Chicago he established schools, disseminated his tachygraphic doctrine, prospered. Of the 7,124 U. S. cities whose public schools teach shorthand, 98% now use the Gregg system.

The two outstanding shorthand systems are the Gregg and the Pitman (originated in 1837) and its adaptations. The Pitman has more symbols—an alphabet of 42 figures, numerous word signs—but fewer stenographers use it than the Gregg. Fundamentally all shorthand systems employ the use of phonetic spelling and abbreviation. But the Pitman method requires the use of lined stationery (identical symbols above and below a line have different connotations and characters of different shading (identical symbols written darker or lighter have different connotations).

What improvements and simplifications Innovator Gregg has made in the stenographer’s task are attributable to: 1) all characters being written with the same intensity; 2) characters based on longhand script rather than applications of geometric figures (Pitman system); 3) incorporation of vowels into the word-figure. But so individualized is all but professional shorthand writing that few stenographers can read one another’s script.