Monday, April 18, 2011

A big step toward adoption of the QWERTY keyboard as the industry standard came in a typing contest held in Cincinnati in 1888, where Frank McGurrin (who used a QWERTY keyboard) won a decisive victory over Louis Taub (who used an alternative keyboard). McGurrin's victory had more to do with the fact that he was one of the first "touch typists" (whereas Taub used the "hunt-and-peck" method). -- Bruno Dyck, Mitchell J. Neubert: Management: Current Practices and New Directions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, Boston (2010).

His name was Louis Traub, not Taub, and he was an eight-finger typist on Caligraph No.2 as I mentioned before. Furthermore, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was beaten by Miss Mae E. Orr, who was a two-finger hunt-and-peck typist, in another typing contest held in Toronto on August 13, 1888 (cf. "Canadian Shorthand Society", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.210-215). Well, how Mr. McGurrin's defeat had more or less to do with the fact?

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