What was the pitman system

Shaw determined that Sweet was too scornful of academia to ever suffer the politics required to make his theories known. Sweet invented the Current Shorthand, which is mentioned in the third act of the play. This phonetic code could express every sound in the English language distinctly. It never prevailed over the more popular Pitman system of shorthand, even though it was easier to write. Shaw suggests that the English simply enlarge their alphabet to cover all the sounds in the language and change their system of spelling to be as directly related to pronunciation as Spanish is. Higgins, the hero of Pygmalion, is not a portrait of Sweet.