"TOUCH" TYPEWRITING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 141, 17 June 1935, Page 8

"TOUCH" TYPEWRITING.

TRAINING TELEGRAPHISTS. "Touch" typewriting is one of the accomplishments of the modern tele-graph-operator, who has to be able to use a typewriter keyboard without looking at it. In telegraphic communication this is the machine age. and comparatively few telegrams to-day are transmitted by hand through the medium of Morse signals. In one section of the operating room in the General Post Office, Wellington, there'can be seen a group of young people undergoing training in modern telegraph practice. They see the actual process going on in front of them, for this is one of the busiest instrument rooms in New Zealand. Already they have learnt Morse operating, but they find that the most essential requirement to-day is to be able to operate a typewriter keyboard without looking at it, and so for a few hours a day they sit at a typewriter, the keyboard of which is screened from their eyes, while thev type words which are reproduced not in the ordinary way, but appear on a tape in the form of perforations. This perforated tape when put into a telegraph transmitter sends impulses along the wires, which reproduce at the other end the familiar Arabic characters. The requirement in touch typing is the capacity to type 45 words per minute with a certain small margin allowed for errors. The difficult code-letter combinations must be accurately typed at the rate of 20 words per minute before the candidate can be considered competent. Higher speeds come with practice. The standard keyboard is used at these typewriters, but the touch required is entirely different from that of ordinary typing, as it is necessary to make a fir.'i electrical contact which enables a tiny punch to perforate the paper tape. Experience shows that it requires 250 to 300 typing hours to become proficient in touch typing on telegraph keyboard perforators.