The Stenographers' Guild

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The Stenographers' Guild

Founder(s)	N. Subramania Iyer
Type	Education
Founded	1937
Headquarters	T. Nagar, Chennai, India
Key people	S.V. Ramaswamy, President
Slogan	Selfless service to the society
Website	http://www.stenold.org

The Stenographers' Guild, founded in 1937, is a non-profit organization providing vocational education and training in the area of Secretarial skills, Information Technology and Shorthand. It is located in T. Nagar, Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.^[1]

[edit] History

Pitman Shorthand was introduced in 1837 with the release of the inventor's book, Stenographic Sound Hand. It reached Madras in 1886 when a commercial school run by the Pachaiyappa Charities began teaching the language. The Stenographers' Guild was formed fifty years later under the initiative of N. Subramania Iyer, a reporter at the Corporation of Madras, and S. Sivaramakrishna Iyer and P. Ramanuja Iyer, shorthand writers of the High Court of Madras, who convened a meeting in Panagal Park attended by about 40 shorthand writers from the Courts, Police, Government and newspapers. The Guild was inaugurated by C. Rajagopalachari, at the time Chief Minister of Madras, on September 26, 1937. It was to be two more years before the Guild was to be registered as a society. It's aim was to train shorthand writers.^[2]

The Guild, in association with The Steno Trust, United States, recently launched a new system of shorthand called Newrite. It was invented by the American Scientist, Walter P. Kistler.

Its key proponents in India Mr. S.V. Ramaswamy and Ms. V. Vidya have contributed immensely to its progress and development. Professionals are now working on the Optical Character Recognition for the system.

Ms. V. Vidya was the world's first ever candidate to achieve the speed of 60 WPM using Newrite.