Almer C. Armstrong began his career as a county official reporter in 1888 and was joined in 1900 by Hazard Okey.  Their partnership was the foundation of Armstrong & Okey, Central Ohio's largest leading freelance reporting firm.
 
"Haz" Okey was the official reporter of Franklin County Common Pleas Court for more than 50 years, and according to news clippings at the time, he was a "landmark among the more colorful citizens of Columbus, and at the same time he has been one of the best-liked and most highly respected."
 
When the firm started, court reporters, who were predominantly male, took notes by hand using shorthand symbols to record the words spoken during legal proceedings.
Eventually taking notes by hand gave way to the stenograph machine, a compact, quiet machine which has 23 keys and can print combinations of letters simultaneously on a narrow paper fed continuously through the machine.  A complex vocabulary of abbreviations is used.
 
The stenograph machine revolutionized the industry, but it still required the reporter or a third party to translate the notes and type up a transcript, a process which could be very time consuming.
 
Then came the computer.  Symbols are imprinted onto a disk in the stenograph machine and then the disk is put into a computer and the notes are translated.  Once the reporter makes necessary edits, the transcript is printed, proofread, and once again printed for final copy.  This process is much quicker than having to type or dictate the entire proceedings.
 
Today, technology has given the predominantly female field real-time, an instantaneous translation on a computer monitor of the symbols typed into the stenograph machine.
 
Who knows if Haz, the man who scoffed at the stenograph machine, who died in 1955 at the age of 79, had any idea of the changes his profession would undergo.  I also wonder if he ever expected his name to still be hanging above the door going into the 21st century.