Transparency was a central value espoused by French Revolutionaries, from the outbreak of Revolution in 1789 through much of the 1790s. Representing the people in newly created legislative bodies would require elected officials to work in public view, facing the regular scrutiny of a vigilant public. Yet, the question of how to render legislative deliberations transparent was a vexing one in an era before modern recording technology. How could people follow what their representatives were saying and doing inside the halls of the national legislature? This paper looks at the rise of stenography during the Revolution as one method reporters advanced to try to make politics transparent and secure representative government. It will survey the proliferation of stenographic systems and courses starting in the late 1780s and through the 1790s to examine specifically how the practice was immediately linked to the project of promoting government transparency, assuring accountability, and building trust.
From there, the paper will examine how reporters took up stenography and the ways in which they presented reports from the floor of national legislatures as verbatim, accurate accounts of what transpired, despite the limitations of the methods available. Ultimately, the paper will probe the concept of transparency through a consideration of the material aspects of its (attempted) application. It asks the question of whether stenography and the reporting it facilitated indeed made government more transparent, or whether it merely had the effect of creating an illusion of transparency and accuracy that opened further challenges about the truth in politics.