STEERING APPARATUS. 



STENOGRAPHY. 



till 1853, when, having no use for them, they sold the property, for 

 which it is said they obtained 72,000?. 



(Strype's Eeeles. if em., iii. 77 ; Anderson's Commerce ; Maepherson's 

 fee ; Dr. Reinhold Pauli's Slider aus alt England, which con- 

 tains an essay on the Steelyard.) 



STEERING APPARATUS. Various contrivances have been made 

 of late years, some of great ingenuity, to remedy the inconveniences 

 of the steering-wheel so long in use. Larger vessels requiring more 

 powerful apparatus for moving the rudder, many patented inventions 

 have appeared which have introduced the use of cogs and screws ; but 

 no one has yet succeeded in effecting such results as would warrant its 

 general adoption. One, however, that by which the steering-wheel is 

 situated in the fore part of the vessel, its motion being communicated 

 to the rudder by ropes, chains, or rods, was used by Symington in his 

 tug-boat upon the Forth and Clyde Canal, about 1802 ; but whether its 

 subsequent adoption in North America is in any degree to be attributed 

 to that circumstance, we are not aware. The peculiar arrangement of 

 the river steamers of America, which have the engines and some of the 

 cabins on deck, combined with their great length, renders it impossible 

 for the steersman, if in the situation usual in the steam-vessels of this 

 country, to see his course ; and, therefore, he is usually elevated on a 

 platform near the bow. 



STELE, the name of any upright column, or tablet, on which were 

 engraved decrees, funereal and other inscriptions, sometimes decorated 

 with subjects in relief. The Egyptian steles, called hutu, placed 

 in the tombs, have, during the 6th and 12th dynasties, scenes of family 

 worship; but under the 18th and subseqxient dynasties adorations to 

 deities are represented : at all periods they have hieroglyphical 

 inscriptions, dedications to sepulchral deities entreating certain benefits 

 for the deceased, and other religious formulas, or even family registers. 

 Some are dated in the reign of the king under whom the deceased 

 died. Other steles, dedications of temples, or invocations to deities on 

 behalf of different monarchs, were placed in the adyta of temples. 

 Granite, basalt, and calcareous stone were chiefly used. The Assyrian 

 steles have generally a bas-relief of the monarch by whom erected, and 

 a long account of his conquests, in cuneiform characters. The Greek 

 sepulchral stoles are often ornamented with figures of various deities 

 to whom they were dedicated, scenes of family repasts, or last adieus, 

 representations of the deceased, or floral and architectural ornaments, 

 and inscriptions commemorative of the deceased. Public acts, treaties, 

 and religious dedications, were often registered on steles. They are 

 generally made of white, although occasionally of coloured, marbles. 

 Some Carthaginian steles have dedications to Baal Hammon and Tanath, 

 and representations of this goddess. (Layard's A'inerth ; Stackelberg, 

 Die Grdbtr tier Jfelltnea ; Hincks, On the JSyyptian Stele.) 



STELLIONATE, a word derived from stellio, the name of an animal 

 of the lizard kind, mentioned by Pliny (' Hist. Nat.', 1. 3, c. 10), and by 

 Virgil (' 4 Geor.', 243), is a term used in the Roman law to denote all 

 such crimes, in which fraud is an ingredient, as hare no special names 

 to distinguish them, and are not defined by any written law. In 

 general, wherever a civil action might be brought on the ground of 

 fraud, there might be a criminal prosecution for stellionate. The term 

 however is chiefly applied to cases where a person sells, exchanges, or 

 transfers to one, property with respect to which he has already entered 

 into a contract with another. It is also applied to cases of pledging 

 another man's property, substituting base for precious metals, dealing 

 in counterfeit or adulterated goods, and generally to the practice of 

 any species of imposture. The punishment of stellionate was of 

 necessity discretionary. Where the criminal was a person of distinc- 

 tion, the ordinary punishment appears to have been temporary 

 banishment and degradation from his rank ; and where he belonged to 

 the lower orders, it seems to have been competent to inflict any 

 punishment short of condemnation to work in the mines. (' Dig.', 47, 

 tit. 20 ; Hellfeld, ' Jurispr. For.', s. 2007.) The term stellionate is 

 used in the law of Scotland in nearly the same sense as in the Roman 

 law. (Ersk., ' Inst.', 4, tit 4, s. 79.) 



STENCILLING is a mode of transferring a coloured pattern or 

 design to the surface of cloth, paper, or other material. The jjattern 

 a cut through a stencil plate, usually a piece of sheet metal ; and liquid 

 or pasty colour is brushed over the plate, in such a way as to pass 

 through the perforations, but not to reach those parts of the paper or 

 cloth on which the uncut portions of the plate rest. Examples of the 

 process will be found noticed under CARD-MAKIXO and PAPER- 



STENOGRAPHY, or the art of short-writing, is a term com- 

 pounded of two Greek words, <mr6t, contracted, and ffd^tiv, to write. 

 The invention of stenography among the Greeks is generally assigned 

 to Xenophon the historian ; but it is said that the art was first practised 

 by Pythagoras, and that the poet Enniug was the first who adopted a 

 system of short writing by whicli a person was enabled to follow a 

 speaker. It is said, though upon no very certain testimony, that he 



need by employing eleven hundred marks of his own invention, 

 and increased the number as circumstances required. 



There are also writers who ascribe the invention of the art to 



; and it was certainly practised by him on account both of its 

 brevity and secrecy. He reminds (' Ad. Att.,' xiii. 32) his friend 

 Atticua that he wrote (8ii arifKtlup) by signs. The art was com- 

 municated by Cicero to Tiro, hia freedman, who made considerable 



improvements in it, and is said to have been likewise the first person 

 who applied it to the purpose of taking down public speeches. Euse- 

 bius attributes the invention to Tiro. The oration of Cato relative to 

 the Catilinarian conspiracy was preserved by means of shorthand. 

 The art was subsequently improved, and stenography became a fashion- 

 able accomplishment with the Romans. There is extant a work on the 

 shorthand (notes of the Romans) attributed to Tiro aud Seneca, and 

 printed in Gruter's ' Collection of Inscriptions.' Most of the writers of 

 that age allude to the stenographic art in their works. Horace points 

 out its brevity ; and Ovid mentions its advantages in point of secresy. 

 It is also commended by Ausonius, Martial, Manilius, and others. 

 [NOTARY.] The Roman shorthand was very different from our own : 

 the abbreviations, in general, appear to have resembled those adopted 

 in ordinary writing, and which frequently occur in ancient manu- 

 scripts, as well as in early editions of Latin works. A very large 

 collection of manuscript abbreviations is printed at the end of Goschen's 

 edition of Gaius ; and specimens of ancient Roman stenography are 

 given in Lewis's ' Historical Account of Shorthand.' Some passages in 

 the Roman writers, which have been supposed to refer to shorthand, 

 appear to refer to writing in cipher. 



The first English treatise on Stenography was published in 1588, by 

 Dr. Timothy Bright, and dedicated to Queeu Elizabeth. It was en- 

 titled ' Characterie, or the Art of Short, Swift, and Secret "Writing;'- 

 and consisted exclusively of arbitrary characters, each of which repre- 

 sented a word. Two years afterwards appeared ' The Writing School- 

 master,' in three parts, by Peter Bale. The system of Bale, like that 

 of his predecessor Bright, was formed of arbitrary characters, instead 

 of a combination of elementary marks or signs. Both systems were 

 exceedingly crude, and difficult of attainment ; requiring, as they did, 

 for their practical application, a remarkable tenacity of memory ; but 

 they displayed great ingenuity as first attempts. The earliest effort to 

 form a regular shorthand alphabet appears to have been made by John 

 Willis, who in 1602 published 'The Art of Stenographic, or Short 

 Writing, by Spelling Characterie.' The work went through numerous 

 editions. The alphabet was fonned of the most difficult and complex 

 characters, which were ill adapted for joining, their formation con- 

 suming treble the time required for forming the characters in any of 

 the modern systems of moderate celebrity. Willis was followed by a 

 host of imitators, none of whom, however, effected any material 

 improvement. In 1618 appeared a treatise upon Stenography by 

 Edmond Willis, which was followed in 1630 by that of Witt ; in 1633 

 by that of Dix ; and by a great number of others at short intervals. 

 That of Rich, published in 1654, was praised by Locke. In 1753 was 

 published the system of Mr. Thomas Gurney, which has since been so 

 very extensively practised by various members of his family and others, 

 in the houses of parliament, the courts of law, &c. 



Among the more recent systems, that of Dr. Byrom deservedly 

 occupies a very prominent position. He succeeded in forming an 

 alphabet at once simple, precise, and practicable, as well as in rendering 

 the general details of his theory exceedingly clear and intelligible. 

 His system was incomparably superior to any which had preceded it. 

 Although the treatise was completed by the year 1720, it was not 

 published till 1767, after the death of the author, who, as he depended 

 for support principally upon private tuition, obtained an act of par- 

 liament for the security of his invention. The doctor, in 17-19, printed 

 fifty copies of his work for the use of his particular frieuds. Since its 

 publication it has been edited by several persons. Mr. Thomas Moli- 

 neux, of Macclesfield, published an edition which he entitled ' An 

 Introduction to Mr. Byrom's Universal English Shorthand,' which was 

 popular for many years ; and some years later, Mr. William Gawtress, 

 of Leeds, published a ' Practical Introduction to Shorthand ' upon the 

 general principles of Byrom, which is one of the cheapest and most 

 useful manuals of shorthand which ever appeared. 



The system next deserving of notice is that of Taylor, which made 

 its appearance in 1786, and is entitled ' An Essay intended to establish 

 a standard for a universal System of Stenography or Shorthand 

 Writing.' This author's system is superior to that of Byrom in several 

 particulars ; but principally in a greater brevity and simplicity of the 

 alphabet, and the facility with which the various characters may be 

 joined to each other ; all points of the utmost value and importance. 

 Some useful practical improvements upon Taylor's system have been 

 made in Mr. Harding's treatise on the art. Dr. Mavor's system, though 

 it obtained considerable popularity, is inferior to that of Taylor, on 

 account of his alphabet requiring a greater number of strokes of the 

 pen, and the characters being more difficult of junction. Since the 

 publication of Dr. Mavor's treatise, many others of various degrees of 

 excellence have been published, but it is needless to enumerate them ; 

 those who desire further information as to the history of the art will 

 find much valuable matter in Mr. Lewis's ' Historical Account of 

 Shorthand.' The alphabets on the next page will in some measure 

 illustrate a portion of the foregoing remarks as to the improvements 

 which have from time to time taken place . 



To shorthand writers we owe full reports of the proceedings of par- 

 liament, of public meetings, and of the courts of law. The newspaper 

 press has indeed given a powerful stimulus to the cultivation of the 

 art, by affording a respectable livelihood to a numerous body of in- 

 dividuals. In addition to what it has done for the daily and weekly 

 press in particular, shorthand Is used for taking down sermons, scientific 



