Why hasn't a machine been invented that replaces court stenographers?

Question:Or has it?

Take a look at this French guy's work from the 1850s and tell me we couldn't have had something like a court stenographer's machine or a spy's dictophone before WW1:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/2...

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Or has it?

Take a look at this French guy's work from the 1850s and tell me we couldn't have had something like a court stenographer's machine or a spy's dictophone before WW1:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/2...

Edison thought courts might adopt his phonograph. However, a machine cannot swear it took records accurately and faithfully, cannot be deposed as a witness, can be editted, and can be tricked by courtroom noises without knowing enough to ask for something to be repeated.

It's called a tape recorder--and all later developments of same.
But the question goes beyond accuracy. Courts while in progress may have to have the record read back in order to confirm what someone said. This has to be done quickly and fumbling through a recording would take too much time.
A court reporter records what people are not only saying, but how people are heard by someone else.
Moreover, written records are necessary for a case to be reviewed. A judge might review the procedings in order to arrive at a sentence. And appelate courts review from a written record of a case. Even if a auditory recording of a case were made, at some point an auditory recording would have to be transcribed into the written word.

We could have. There are speech to text programs. But there are still a need for people to do this because machines don't understand homophones.

no no, the day that some one invents a machine who can do the job of stenographer, i will be out of job.

now are you going to pay my bills.

before this device people use to take shorthands means every letter in English had a sign like morose cods.
the person in charge of this method later on would put those sings together and figure out the words and then the whole sentence, and then typed it up.

then some one invented stenography machine which it made the job much much easiar.

You need a Court Reporter in the Courtroom to read back instantaneously.
Did you know that she then has a "machine" that takes her record and puts it into a nice little transcript for use later, should it be necessary?
It is prohibitively expensive though.
I don't think there are too many Court Reporters out there who are starving, unless they just don't want to work.
It's an excellent job that takes an intelligent, hard working person to take on.