Wilbur Hubbard wrote:
My mom died last last year at this time. After building Liberty ships
i WW2 and Korea she became a typest. When she retired she was able to
do 120 error free. But then again she also new shorthand. SHe really
liked the computers. It was more difficult to jam em. She routeenly
out typed the IBM Selectricts. She was just too fast for thoes IBM
balls.


Sorry, but that's either a lie or an old wife's tale. IBM Selectrics had
a memory chip. You could not lose keystrokes because you eventuated them
faster than the mechanism could put them on paper. If you typed faster
than the ball could move, the ball would just continue to move after you
had stopped typing until it caught up.

I hope this helps.


The Selectric came out in 1961 and had no chip. In fact it had no
electronics, other than the motor. The entire works were mechanical,
including the "stroke storage" that allowed a second key to come in
somewhat faster than the nominal 65 millisecond cycle time.

At 14.8 characters/second, this is 3 words/second or 180 words per
minute. This is faster than any typist can sustain, but is perhaps
possible in a burst.