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Type 225 Words per Minute with a Stenographic Keyboard (Video)

Joshua Lifton says you can learn to type at 225 words per minute with his Stenosaurus, an open source stenography keyboard that has a not-there-yet website with nothing but the words, "Stenography is about to evolve," on it as of this writing. If you've heard of Joshua it's probably because he's part of the team behind Crowd Supply, which claims, "Our projects raise an average of $43,600, over twice as much as Kickstarter." A brave boast, but there's plenty of brainpower behind the company. Joshua, himself. has a PhD from MIT, which according to his company bio means, "he's devoted a significant amount of his time learning how to make things that blink." But the steno machine is his own project, independent of Crowd Supply.

Stenotype machines are usually most visible when court reporters are using them. They've been around since the 1800s, when their output was holes in paper tape. Today's versions are essentially chorded keyboards that act as computer input devices. (Douglas Engelbart famously showed off a chorded keyboard during his 1968 Mother of All Demos.) Today you have The Open Steno Project, and Stenosaurus is a member. And while Joshua's project may not have an actual website quite yet, it has an active blog. And the 225 WPM claim? Totally possible. The world record for English language stenography is 360 WPM. And you thought the Dvorak Keyboard was fast. Hah! (Alternate Video Link)

2 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Now this is funny. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    You really want to have juries looking back at statements and thinking, "Damn you Auto-Correct!"

  2. Re:Now this is funny. by vux984 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Quite a few writers do 'stream-of-consciousness' writing and then go back and edit it... If we're lucky. :p

    But even them I doubt really are planning to go to school to learn stenography.

    More than that though, my typing speed isn't a bottleneck. The bottleneck is envisioning the idea and subsequently debugging the resulting code.

    Sounds about right.

    Is anyone really being held back from writing the next great american novel because they only type at 90 wpm?

    Doubtful, these modern hipster authors are bragging that they pecked it out on a smartphone keyboard; and we're lucky if we don't have to read it in typical texting shorthand.