Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

by Christopher Clark

Reliable stenography was an important, if overlooked, aspect of this public resonance. Tachygraphy – the art of swift writing – was an ancient skill and parliamentary stenography was already established in eighteenth-century Britain, but it was only in 1848 that the broad outlines of a modern parliamentary stenographic service first saw the light of day in Paris. In the Constituent Assembly of 1848, two stenographers, a ‘rolling stenographer’ (sténographe rouleur) and a reviser (réviseur) perched on opposite sides of the tribune. The former succeeded each other in rotation, taking stenographic notes for two minutes and then transcribing them in haste, while the reviser, working in eighteen-minute stints, collated the transcriptions of his colleagues and established the sense or meaning by ‘revising’ the text. The whole thing was then reassembled, verified and certified by the head of service, who was also present during the session for as long as the assembly was sitting. Once this was done, the pages of transcript were carried by a porter to the printing works of the official Moniteur Universel, corrected once and then signed off for printing, authorized for publication and made available to the principal press organs on the day following the session recorded.[143] This put an end to the parallel circulation in the political press of conflicting versions of the same speeches that had vexed the legislators of the July Monarchy.