VMs: RE: More shorthand trivia

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nick wrote:
>
> But honestly, GC, give the truly vast amounts of
> Baconia in the ULL
> Historic Collections, how come you haven't moved to
> London to immerse
> yourself in it? :-)))
>
> The Harry Price Collection looks quite interesting too. :-)


When I win the lottery I'll make the move in a heartbeat.  For now
I'll have to settle with EEBO and a few collections from Oxford
and other English libraries.  Gallica's a good source as well.
Still more available here from England than from all the US
libraries put together.  We'd rather spend more money on a single
new weapons system than we are willing to spend on our entire
library system. :-(  Great time to get into buy stock in arms
companies though.

Speaking of wierd Baconiana (off topic for a millisecond), have
you ever viewed "Calligraphotechnia", by Richard Gething?  Bi,
tri, and quadraliteral cipher ditties, and more double letter
counts than you could wish for!  (Dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon
by coincidence...)
When I get free sometime in 2028, I plan to spend some time on
this book.

> When I was researching early shorthand before, I was a
> little disappointed
> at the paucity of references. Perhaps I ought to go
> back to the British
> Library and Just Try Harder. :-)

I'm sort of at a loss for information on this topic as well.  What
further confuses me is that the "zieglographia" system these words
are found in doesn't resemble Shelton's earlier "tachygraphia",
but has many symbols in common with Bright's work.  I wonder how
difficult it would be to take a raw sample of either system and
try to "crack" it without knowing anything about how it works, or
even what language it's written in.  Not exactly how I'd want to
spend my weekend, I'm sure.


> If that symbol does represent "feare (of) god", and/or
> the other symbol for
> "eternal life", then surely it should be a fairly
> straightforward matter to
> shortlist Biblical quotations containing them both?
> This may give a crib
> for the intervening symbols...
>
> ...though I'm sure you're already checking this out. :-)

On top of it already, in English and in Latin.  Not necessarily a
scripture quote I think though, but something out of a prayer
book???  I'm downloading a bunch from this period.  These symbols
would probably still have the same meaning in Latin as in English.

Im really bugged by the fact that Shelton did an about-face on his
tachygraphia and produced the second book.  1650 is when Shelton
was supposed to have died.... wonder if this is another
all-to-common case of name theft.  All alien abduction theories
welcome at this point.

I checked to see if I had any Shelton on my site, and discovered
that Microsoft's WEFT program wiped my download page clean.  I'll
have to rebuild it, and in the process I'll add Shelton's three
books with special pages highlighted for the glyphs in question.
Sometimes Microsoft's programs can be weapons of extreme terror
and mass destruction.

GC