I type a lot because I write a lot. Morning, noon, and night. But typing isn’t what it used to be. Today, the entire process of typing is easy-peasy. Things were much more difficult back in the day with mechanical typewriters.
With that in mind, it is amazing, remarkable, and confounding that on this date, October 21, 1918, Margaret Owen set the world typing speed record of 170 words per minute for one minute. Or so it was reported.
I always think of myself as a fast typer. I just took an online speed test moments ago and only knocked out 64 words per minute. I thought I was faster than this.
But back to Margaret.
Holy heck, she could type.
But first, I would like to mention Frank Bunker Gilbreth. He was an engineer, American-born. He, along with his wife, Lillian Gilbreth, developed the method of time-and-motion study. They filmed people doing things and applied their studies to the work habits of people. All of this was with the intention to increase workers’ efficiency and hence their output.
The Gilbreths made a study of Margaret Owen, and I’ve included the video they made of Margaret. This demonstration took place in 1916.
The story is quite interesting. Gilbreth claimed he had trained Owen to be a champion typist. Well, he allegedly had a tendency to tell some fibbers in order to push the success of his motion studies. Gilbreth stretched the truth in this case, which makes the rest of the claims about his work mission a bit questionable.
The truth? Margaret was a badass typer before she ever met Gilbreth. Owen had won the world professional championship three times between 1913 and 1916. She also set a world record of 137 words a minute under strict championship conditions in 1916.
Margaret was a member of the Underwood Speed Typing “Dream Team.” Who knew? I mean, typing “Dream Teams” in the early 1900s? That’s just a new kind of crazy.
She had been coached by Canadian-born typing instructor Charles E. Smith, not by Gilbreth.
Margaret Owen was the daughter of a Canadian printer, William Benedict Owen. So the whole “printing” and typing thing was in her blood, I’d say. Margaret rose to typewriting excellence at an early age. By 1910 — at the age of 17 — she won the world novice speed typing championship from Bessie Friedman and Parker Claire Woodson, scoring 83 words a minute.
She kept this speedy dominance for the next decade. Then, in 1921, Margaret Owen married a Navy Lieutenant-Commander named Raymond Farrington Tyler. He was a blimp driver. Yes, a dirigible and airship naval aviator. They had two children, a son, Owen, and a daughter Louise.
Margaret Benedict Owen Tyler died in Los Altos, California, on June 1, 1952. She and her husband are buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. I hope they put a typewriter in her coffin.
Another thing we should know about life.
Find what you love to do, and hit every key.
https://youtu.be/8iTOSgAnJ54
=========
“Every artist was first an amateur.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
==========
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
— John Ruskin
==========
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
==========
Strike those keys like you mean it. And fast.
