Birdie Reeve Kay, born Birdie Reeve (January 16, 1907 – May 31, 1996"Birdie Reeve Kay, 89, Performer in Vaudeville", ''Chicago Sun-Times'', June 3, 1996), was an American champion

typist Typist is a person who types, a clerical worker who writes documents, using a typewriter. Skills and occupations Typist may also refer to: *Data entry clerk, someone who types data into a database via a computer or terminal. * Audio typist, someone ...

who performed in the 1920s in

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

. She reached speeds of over 200 words, or 800 letters, per minute, and was billed as the "World's Fastest Typist". She used only two fingers of each hand, spread out in a V formation, in a typing system reportedly invented by her father Thomas Reeve. She explained that she achieved her speed by "studying words and not the typewriter", classifying words by their endings, and was reported to have a vocabulary of 64,000 words. She wrote several books on words. In 1924, she appeared at a gathering of the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

to analyze a speech by then President

Calvin Coolidge Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican lawyer ...

; she sorted the words used in the speech by length. Her vaudeville act was mentioned in

George Burns George Burns (born Nathan Birnbaum; January 20, 1896March 9, 1996) was an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer, and one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, radio, film and television. His arched eyebr ...

' 1989 book ''All My Best Friends''. He wrote: "If you could do anything better, faster, longer, more often, higher, worse or differently than anyone else, you could work in vaudeville. For example, 'The World's Fastest Typist' had a great act. She'd type 200 words a minute, then pass the perfectly typed pages out to the audience to be inspected. For her finish she'd put a piece of tin in her typewriter and imitate a drum roll or the clackety-clack of a train picking up speed." She also was a good

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

player as a teenager, gave

simultaneous exhibition A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition (commonly chess or Go) in which one player (typically of high rank, such as a grandmaster or dan-level player) plays multiple games at a time with a number of other pl ...

s, and was sometimes reported to be one of the best female players of her time in America. She had a daughter, Hope Hirschman, in 1931. She assumed the name Birdie Reeve Kay when she married Harry H. Kay. She later owned and operated a stenography business in

Hyde Park, Chicago Hyde Park is the 41st of the 77 community areas of Chicago. It is located on the South Side, near the shore of Lake Michigan south of the Loop. Hyde Park's official boundaries are 51st Street/Hyde Park Boulevard on the north, the Midway Pla ...

, and typed many theses for students at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

."Champion typist Birdie Reeve Kay", ''Chicago Tribune'', June 6, 1996

References

External links

Who Was Birdie Reeve?

by Chess Notes

Chess Notes 4509 {{DEFAULTSORT:Reeve Kay, Birdie 1907 births 1996 deaths Vaudeville performers People from Chicago American female chess players American chess players 20th-century chess players