Wow!!! I'd always wondered what was the limit on a manual machine ... and now I'm only two degrees of separation from the fastest typists of all time! As for typing for an hour from unrecognised copy ... my fingers ache already. David West Executive Director internationalconservationservices T: +61 (2) 9417 3311 M: +61 (411) 692 696 sustaining your heritage -----Original Message----- From: The listserv where the buildings do the talking [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin C. Tangora Sent: Wednesday, 28 April 2010 1:32 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [BP] rivets -- i want to learn about rivets Can't resist jumping into this thread. My father, Albert Tangora (1903-1978), was the fastest typist, or one of the two fastest, of the era before electric typewriters (1941). He won the professional contest seven times. Guinness Book always said his record was 147 wpm, but that was early on, before they realized that different texts had different average word lengths, and so they standardized word length by taking total strokes and dividing by five. His record was 142 net 5-stroke words per minute for an hour, and it still stands, for a "manual" machine. The professional contest required typing for an hour from unfamiliar copy. You fed your own paper (he lost 3/5 of a second between sheets of paper). "Net" reflects the penalty of 10 words off your hour total for each error; if the lower-case letter after a capital was misaligned that counted as an error. 142 wpm is about 12 strokes per second -- for an hour. When he was in his 60s he told me he still had dreams (or nightmares) that he was training for the contest. -- **Please remember to trim posts, as requested in the Terms of Service** To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to: <http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>