Wednesday, August 10, 2011

On July 25, 1888, two men brought their typewriters to Cincinnati for what might be called the first "speed trials" of the information age. ... The first of the competitors was Louis Taub. A champion of the old school, Taub used only two fingers from each hand to operate his double keyboard Caligraph, and type by reading a line or two of the copy and then transcribing them. His opponent, Frank E. McGurrin, was of the new school. The key to his technique was that he used not only all ten of his fingers on his Remington No.1, but that he typed "blind": having memorized the keyboard, McGurrin relied on his sense of touch alone to ensure the accuracy of his transcription. -- Christopher Keep: "Blinded by the Type", Ninteenth-Century Contexts, Vol.23, No.1 (June 2001), pp.149-173.

His name was Louis Traub, not Taub, and he was an eight-finger typist on Caligraph No.2 as I mentioned before. At that time Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was an all-finger typist on Remington No.2, not Remington No.1 (cf. "McGurrin's Record", The Deseret News, Vol.37, No.36 (September 19, 1888), p.1, l.2). Furthermore, the typewriter contest on July 25, 1888, at Cincinnati was not the first one ever. At least, a typewriter contest at New York had been reported in April, 1887 (cf. "About Women", Logansport Daily Pharos, 12th Year, No.267 (April 2, 1887), p.3, l.4).