a creating a new alphabet
Shaw was born on July 26, 1856. He was a celebrated writer of such plays as "Pygmalion," upon which the musical "My Fair Lady" was based.
In "Pygmalion," a phonetics expert makes a bet that he can pass off a lowly Covent Garden flower girl as a member of high society by teaching her how to speak properly.
Shaw's interest in phonetics went well beyond the play. He left money in his will to pay for a contest to come up with a new system of writing that would eliminate the spelling irregularities in the standard Latin system. Instead of having letters like C and S or G and J make the same sound under certain circumstances, Shaw envisioned a new alphabet that would assign a single sound for each letter.
As part of the contest, Shaw's play "Androcles and the Lion" was printed in the new alphabet. Since then, it hasn't been used for much else.
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