Why are notes taken at a business meeting called “minutes”?

The reason the written records of a meeting are called the minutes is because, in order to keep up, the minute-taker wrote in a shorthand or abbreviation. The word used to describe this condensed writing was minute (my-noot), meaning “small,” and because the spelling is the same, the minutes (my-noots) became minutes. The same circumstances apply to Frederick Chopin’s Minute Waltz: It’s really his small or minute (my-noot) waltz.