Thanks Dan.

In 1941 -- the last of the big professional contests --
he set his record of 142, but a woman nobody had known of
did 147 on an IBM electric.  Then Pearl Harbor,
my father enlisted in the Navy and taught typing
in Honolulu.  He had to suffer the indignity
of not being an officer, just a CPO, because he
had dropped out of high school to become
a professional speed typist.

He was never tempted to go over to the electric machines.
I always say it would be like trying to get
the world's best harpsichordist to learn piano.

There was a "colored" professional speed typist,
Cortez Peters, also very fast, whose gimmick
was to type at high speed on a portable typewriter
(much different action) while wearing mittens.

By the time I was in school I could type 50 or 60 wpm,
just using two fingers, so I never really learned
the touch system, although my father's books on touch typing
were all over the house.

My son is a videogame programmer, was using a computer
when he was three, and, like many of his generation,
can type very fast.  The computer has brought us into
a brave new world of keyboarding speed, with any number
of fingers from one to ten, not to mention two thumbs.
Typing classes (keyboarding classes) are back in vogue,
but, like me, lots of the kids don't need them,
because they are already so good and so fast.

My father never, as I recall, did anything productive
in your sense.  I wish I could find some of his
typewriter art, though.  There was a kind of game
in which you "drew" portraits or other images
on the typewriter, using imaginative combinations
of special characters along with letters and numbers.

His hour-long demonstrations were basically circus acts.
For instance, he would add a column of five-digit numbers
(read to him by the audience) while typing full speed.

Ask me how he met my mother.

On 4/27/2010 11:01 AM, Becker, Dan wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Martin C. Tangora
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 11:32 AM
>
>> My father, Albert Tangora (1903-1978),
>> was the fastest typist, or one of the two fastest,
>> of the era before electric typewriters (1941).
>
>> His record was 142 net 5-stroke words
>> per minute for an hour, and it still stands,
>> for a "manual" machine.
>
> This is very cool. I am fascinated by it.
>
> They talk a lot in baseball about feats that may never be achieved and records that will never be broken. I had not thought about it before, but this is another kind of record that is likely never to be broken, because its time has passed.
>
> It's hard to imagine what he might have done with a computer keyboard [reduced it to a spooge (thank you Rude for my word of the day) of molten plastic?].
>
> Did your father do anything "productive" with this talent like transcribe presidential speeches live for documentation in the Library of Congress, or was his career primarily in promotion as a roving freak of nature, like Lance Armstrong only different?
>
> Dan Becker,  Exec. Dir.     "What's this? Fan mail
> Raleigh Historic             from some flounder?"
> Districts Commission         - Bullwinkle J. Moose
> [log in to unmask]
> 919/516-2632

-- 

Martin C. Tangora
tangora (at) uic.edu

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