Several earlier articles in this series have touched on the role that computers have played in the ease with which researchers are now able to design their apparatus (Computer Assisted Design or CAD) or eventually analyze, illustrate and publish their results, using mathematical programs and graphing techniques readily available on a Personal Computer or PC.
Nancy Carter, who worked as a “Secretary” at Chalk River in the days before “Administrative Assistants”, recently donated to the Canadian Nuclear Heritage Museum (CNHM) a document that gives us an indication of the difficulties that the ladies in the “low-tech” days encountered in accurately transferring the orations, or mumbles, of their esteemed bosses into typed prose.
Wikipedia tells us “the Pitman shorthand system, developed by Sir Issac Pitman in 1837, is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written as they are spoken.” What Nancy donated is an eighteen-page document listing Pitman symbols (more than 700) developed specifically for nuclear-related terms. The accompanying figure shows a short section of the document showing symbols for words/terms starting with the letter “m”.
The complexity of the shorthand symbols must have been a challenge for even the most talented secretary. Accompanying the listing of the nuclear-related symbols from Nancy is a twenty-one-page set of “Shorthand Practice Sessions”, each containing three paragraphs that presumably the secretary used to practice and maintain her skills.
Compact cassette tape recorders first began to appear in common usage in the 1960s. Their very welcome appearance at Chalk River Laboratories was probably accompanied by the resounding thump of the Pitman manuals in the nearest waste baskets. We are grateful to Nancy for having preserved hers and to have donated it to the CNHM.
