CHAMPION TYPIST

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 51, Issue 206, 13 June 1931, Page 8

CHAMPION TYPIST

THOUSAND TAPS A MINUTE.

ENGLISH GIRL’S AMAZING SPEED

Without moving from her office chair, a slim dark girl, recently broke another high-speed record for Britain. Then, just to show it was no “fluke she casually broke another, and then a third. She typed faster than anyone has ever typed before. There was no audience, no publicity of any sort. All that happened was that a quiet little girl from Manchester Miss Eleanor Mitchell, slipped a -sheet of paper into her typewriter and then began to type at an incredible speed. She achieved 900 tups a minute, 950 taps a minute, and then, finally, 1000 taps a minute. This represents more than 200 words a minute—faster than most people can talk. For fours years in succession this 20-year-old girl has been champion typist of Europe. She is probably easily th fastest iypis£ i ll the world. She 'is the counterpart among the everyday girl workers of the Campbells, the . Kaye Dons, and the Orlebars. And the Campbell-Kaye DonOrlebar spirit has brought her success. “The first time I sat before a typewriter while I was still at school at Southport,” she said, “the instructor said ‘You look like a future cliamP 1 “I thought ‘All right, I*ll become a champion,’ and I set to work to make mv typing as perfect as I could. Gradually my speed increased. Bit by bit my touch became more perfect. It meant hours and hours of hard work every day, but I kept at it ,and finally the day 'came when I went to Paris and, beat a German girl for the European 'championship.” Since then the little Manchester girl has won the championship in three successive years. Now she is prepared to accept a challenge from anyone in the world .to a typewriting efficiency To test her spelling a correspondent of the “Sunday Chronicle” rattled off at her the old sentence that, written straight down without pauses foi cogitation, will floor nearly everyone: “In the precincts of a cemetery a harassed pedlar and an embarrassed cobbler were gauging with unparalleled ecstasy the symmetry of a lady s ankle.” Miss Mitchell tore the sheet of paper from the machine. The average person make stakes at least in this sentence. But the super-efficient typist had not made a single one.