> On Jan 26, 2023, at 4:23 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2023, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>> I submit that the Selectric was not the optimum platform with which to
>> set speed records.
>
> Of course not!
> Even a daisy wheel is easily capable of twice that.
> But, we didn't have convenient access to anything better half a century ago.
The Selectric was a really nice mechanism for swappable typeface work. And
versions of it could do proportional spacing, well enough for some commercial
typesetting work (like magazines). Of course, they weren't the first design
for swappable typefaces; that would be the Hammond typewriters from around
1900. Which, by the way, came with two choices of keyboard: a QWERTY keyboard,
and their "ideal" keyboard which is semicircular and has two levels of shift
(one for capital letters and the other for punctuation, corresponding to the
three rows of characters on the rotating type shuttle that carries the
characters to be imprinted). Come to think of it, a version of the Hammond
("Varityper") could do proportional spacing too, many decades before the IBM
"Composer".
> I don't know what would be the fastest mechanism.
> Maybe a good keyboard input to a computer with a laser printer output?
Fastest, perhaps, but that doesn't permit immediate feedback -- you can't see
what you typed. Not unless you have a display in between. For fingers to page
in real time, the best answer is probably the dot matrix printer -- LA120 could
do 120 characters/second as the name indicates, and chances are that could be
beaten with some effort if it mattered.
That "fastest typist" article says the pre-computer record was done with an IBM
Electric typewriter -- that would be a machine with conventional type arms,
propelled by a mechanism involving a rotating rubber roller. Interesting that
those were faster than the Selectric. And they could be hooked to computers;
the IBM 1620 model 1 had such a setup (in the Model 2 it became a Selectric),
and other computers of that era used things like the similar and very sturdy
Friden Flexowriter.
paul
