Legislatures may choose to issue transcripts of the words spoken in their debates and proceedings. Unlike the journals of such bodies, which are merely the record of the votes and measures taken at a given meeting, or government gazettes, which are the records of the laws enacted by such legislatures, these transcripts are nominally a verbatim record of the words spoken on the floor. Such records can, and often have, been instead printed in private newspapers independent from the legislature itself.
It is much more effort to record the exact words spoken at a legislative meeting than to simply record the motions and votes, so transcripts as such are much less common than journals. In the British parliament, whose records date to the 14th century, transcribing the words spoken during parliamentary business became legal only in the early 19th century. At that time the Hansard began print, and even then was an incomplete record of the proceedings until the 20th century. Similarly, whilst the Canadian federal parliament has had a Hansard since its 1867 inception, its provinces largely did not adopt them until the late 20th century.
In the United States, the houses of Congress have maintained journals since their 1789 creation, a transcript of its debates did not begin until the 1824 Register of the Debates of Congress, whose successors began offering verbatim transcription in 1851 and evolved into the Congressional Record.