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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)
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)
I'm sorry for being negative here, but listening to how stenography is "about to evolve" makes me laugh. In this day and age where every damn thing is captured on video and audio already, questioning the validity of a stenographer and the specialized equipment they require to do the exact same job isn't exactly an exercise in futility.
Yeah, I can't imagine who (in my admittedly small circle of friends) would really need or want this. It seems like it's great for transcribing speech, or any situation where you are trying to parse a stream of language and the rate of the stream isn't dictated by you. I don't really think WPM is the bottleneck for other endeavors. As a programmer, i just assume it's not really suited to all the punctuation in my favorite languages. More than that though, my typing speed isn't a bottleneck. The bottleneck is envisioning the idea and subsequently debugging the resulting code.
I'm not a writer, but i imagine that's similar. Is anyone really being held back from writing the next great american novel because they only type at 90 wpm? Or is it just that they don't really have a good idea.