Eliza Boardman Burnz (31 October 1823 - 19 June 1903) was a nineteenth century American

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''ste ...

inventor and promoter. Her simplified alphabet, arranged in the basis of

Isaac Pitman Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' in 183 ...

's ''Phonography'', was the subject of

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

's essay ''A Simplified Alphabet''.

Biography

She was born Eliza Boardman in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

; her parents were John Boardman and Anna Thomason. She moved with her family to the United States in 1837. She was married twice and had four children. As a librarian and the "mother" of women stenographers, Burnz championed spelling reform and founded the Burnz' Fonic Shorthand in 1869. Burnz claimed no originality in its method, as it was based on Isaac Pitman's method, which she had become familiar with in 1846. The Burnz system's best feature was its ability to enable the writer to write with legibility and speed. In 1872, she began teaching shorthand at

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

and the

Young Women's Christian Association The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...

. Burnz was a suffragist and promoted

Dianism Dianism is a 19th-century American spiritual sexual practice consisting of "sexual satisfaction from sexual contact" but without ejaculation. The practice was named for Diana, the Roman goddess of chastity, by American court reporter and astronom ...

, a sexual practice which permits sexual contact without ejaculation. Burnz died 19 June 1903 at Walters Park Sanitarium near

Reading, Pennsylvania Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philade ...

Bibliography

* ''Burnz' phonic shorthand, for schools, business writing and reporting. Arranged on the basis of Isaac Pitman's "Phonography".'' * ''Pure phonics for home and kindergarten; short essays which present the need and method of teaching the elementary sounds of the English language to children before they are taught to read script or print''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burnz, Eliza Boardman 1823 births 1903 deaths 19th-century American inventors Creators of writing systems People from Essex Cooper Union faculty