26 Jan
2023
26 Jan
'23
8:34 p.m.
On Jan 26, 2023, at 2:39 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jan 2023, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
I believe professionals routinely achieved that speed, certainly on electric typewriters;
non-electric ones would be a bit harder.
I recently came across the old H.S. yearbook of
my grandmother from 1940s,
and it had a report/atrticle of a typing-class (all female; it mentioned
there were two males but they dropped out of the class), and the young
ladies had won a regional contest at a blazing speed of ~20 wpm. I
recall actually using a typewriter long ago, and I recall there being an
implicit speed limit because if you went too fast, the metal hammers would
bind up -- so I imagine in the 1940s the mechanical design of consumer/H.S.
grade typewriters maybe wasn't the best (so 20wpm then maybe was
reasonable).
Half a century ago, professional typists would strive for, and maybe succeed at 100 WPM.
The IBM selectric mechanism could handle 14.8
characters per second, about 150 WPM. At GSFC, one guy managed to get a selectric
terminal up to about twice that (300 baud?), but soon, the [APL] typeball flew off across
the room. There was some discussion of competing for distance.
I knew a professional typist, working for my book publisher, who, on the right machines
(Linoterm) could average 150 WPM for an 8 hour day. At the end of the day, she had little
or no remembrance of what she had typed.
On conventional consumer Selectrics, she would wear one out in weeks.
Wow.
Data point: the PLATO system (University of Illinois) had a typing speed test program with
a challenging wrinkle: if you mistyped any letter it would erase the current word entirely
so you'd have to start over. And since it was a competitive game, it kept records.
Those still exist; there are a couple of entries that seem to be robots, but the highest
that seems real is 122 wpm and a dozen or so are over 100. (Mine is 75.8).
paul