Silently and inconspicuously, shorthand writers have been instrumental in recording, documenting and preserving oral history. Thoughts and spoken words can simply fly away without any hope of retrieval - the written word remains.' So begins this account of a skill that greatly enhanced media and business communications in the 20th century, and continues to do so. Shorthand writers in Australia date to the early years of colonisation. Users brought with them the method of their time and infectious curiosity prompted inventions and improvements through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries....