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)

Comments

Now this is funny.

[LWATCDR]

Sorry I worked for a company that built Stenomachines and wrote software for Court Reporters.
1. Learning to write Steno is hard. It is very hard. A lot of full time students never break 180, 225 is what you need to graduate.
2. The market is small.
3. You have several companies that have been in the market for decades. Stenograph, Advantage Software, ProCat, and Stenovations are probably the market leaders.
4. The requirement for support is super high.
5. The market is shrinking.

Re:Now this is funny.

[shadowrat]

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.

Re:Now this is funny.

[khasim]

Many people would be happy to increase their typing speed from 75 wpm to say 150 wpm.

Except that they'd have to put in a LOT of hours training on those systems to get that increase.

And for most of them, the majority of time is spent thinking about what to type.

Re:Now this is funny.

[vux984]

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.

Re:Now this is funny.

[The Grim Reefer]

many courtrooms do not allow recording or electronic devices. thus, the courtroom sketches and transcribing of proceedings in realtime.

Except the court reporter is generally exempt from such rules. I used to be one. Most of the time the record is keyed real time. However you can't always get it all and be 100% every time. The recording is used to clean up the transcription after the fact.

The ban of recording devices is for the general public and reporters.

Re:Now this is funny.

[NotDrWho]

Typing a lot of wpm isn't the problem. It's picking the *right* words that slows you down.

Plover

[Anonymous Coward]

No discussion of open source steno is complete without mentioning the excellent Plover program. If you're interested at all in steno, check it out:

http://plover.stenoknight.com/

The new and improved buggy whip

[geekmux]

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.

Stenography for CODING? LOL!

[jeffb (2.718)]

Take a quick look at the Wikipedia entry for stenotype to see why using a stenographic keyboard for coding is such a laughable idea.

Stenography relies heavily on a highly-trained stenographer to do the recording, and on a similarly highly-trained individual to turn the record into recognizable English. Trying to use that for writing code, where you don't have the redundancy and patterns of English, is a bit like trying to use Swype to transcribe telephone numbers. Wrong tool for the task, period.