My mother taught Pitman shorthand (as well as related secretarial skills) for many years until probably the early nineties. My father still has many of her old textbooks, and some of them are novels translated into shorthand for reading and comprehension practice. They're kind of odd things to look at - page after page of squiggles that are somehow clearly artificial rather than natural orthography.

Also, it is interesting to encounter an encyclopedia article explaining something that was, until recently, common enough that its existence and usage was part of general knowledge. A useful reminder of how things change.