"... few stenomaskers. Freakish things." (see post 24 of "Levels of Gregg")
Andrew, a sharp little bias there?
Go to the National Verbatim Reporters Association website for some interesting reading about speech recognition software and court reporting.
Military courts in the US and Canada have used stenomask reporters for about 50 years -- and the system was developed because the inventor thought the practices of the 1940's were silly -- a shorthand writer (either hand or machine) would then dictate the whole transcript onto a tape so typist who did not read or write shorthand (and thus was paid considerably less than one who did understand shorthand) could type the transcript -- the the shorthand reporter could have considerably more time to take shorthand. So, the inventor thought, why not dictate directly onto the tape in the courtroom.
It's worked for the military court system, quite well -- in fact, in Canada virtually the only stenomask reporters are retired military personnel.
I think it was a sound idea, certainly sound enough for the time, and with the advent and increasing utility of speech recognition tech, maybe we won't need stenotype reporters in 20 years. Who knows.
I'm fascinated by speech recognition tech, both it's successes and it's failures.
Any and all comment welcome!
Billy (sidhetaba)
(by sidhetaba for everyone)