Albert Tangora (July 2, 1903 – April 7, 1978) set the world speed record for sustained typing on a manual keyboard for one hour, 147

words per minute Words per minute, commonly abbreviated wpm (sometimes uppercased WPM), is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving. Alphanumeric entry Since word ...

, on October 22, 1923. After a rest period, he typed 159 words in a one-minute "sprint." The machine was an Underwood Standard, with a

QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden t ...

keyboard. His record has never been surpassed on a manual

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

. Tangora's speeds in subsequent typing competitions in New York sponsored by the International Commercial Schools Association were slightly slower, due to different scoring rules, but he held the record there as well of 141 words per minute, set in 1937 on a Royal typewriter.Blivens In all he won the competition seven times, finally beaten by a typist using an electric machine. Tangora lived in Paterson, New Jersey at the time of his 1923 record-setting performance, but he moved to

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, ...

around 1937.

References

*"Big Crowd Drawn By Business Show," ''New York Times'', October 23, 1923, page 5. *"Deaths Last Week" (includes Albert Tangora obituary), ''Chicago Tribune'', April 16, 1978, page 47. * Bliven, Jr., Bruce (1954). ''The Wonderful Writing Machine.'' p. 128. Random House, New York 1903 births 1978 deaths People from Evanston, Illinois Typing {{US-bio-stub