Image from a speed typing contest in 1938.
Long before typewriting contests were used as a marketing strategy in the early 1900s to demonstrate the machine’s speed, the earliest competitions were sporting affairs.
Wrote The Albuquerque Journal on May 28, 1886, “Secretary Wheelock of the territorial fair informed The Democrat this morning that the suggestion of this paper that the association offer a prize for a type writer contest, has been favorably considered. Besides this there will be a nice prize offered for a bycicle (sic) race, and several prizes for a glass ball and pigeon shooting match.”
The earliest typewriter contest, however, dates to 1885, when several telegraph operators competed for a $50 prize for “the best work,” which was won by George R. Allhands of Louisville, Kentucky. He also competed in 1892 in a contest in which telegraph operators transcribed dispatches, presumably on typewriters but perhaps also by hand. 1 According to his obituary in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1938, Allhands was the first telegrapher to use a typewriter on the job.
The Lincoln Star (October 25, 1885), described:
Mr. George Allhands, who is the day operator for the asociated press on the Courier-Journal, has been receiving press reports on a type writer for a month or two, and has become very expert in its use. Mr. Allhands is now able to take about sixty words a minute, and expects to be abole to increase the speed to ninety words a minute. No operator will ever be able to send at that rate, but by abbreviating the words on the wire and spelling them out on the type writer a lively speed would be obtained.
‘It has many advantages,’ said Mr. Allhands, ‘over the stylus, or pencil. My hands and arms do not tire. My copy is the same as printed mattter, and the writer works well on manifold paper as on single sheets. The type writer is a great boon to my profession.’
Based on descriptions, the earliest competitions differ from tests students take in schools, in which students type a page of text in a given amount of time, and then count words and deduct mistakes to determine words per minute. According to the contest judge in the 1885 competition, “I made two comparative tests, one upon markets [margins?] and one upon news [text].” Transcription was also an element of the competition.
In a contest in 1888, “[t]he conditions … were that each man should write forty-five minutes from dictation and the same length of time from copy. It was agreed that only legal matter should be used.” Frank E. McGurrin of Salt Lake City, claimed the $500 purse in that contest, typing 8,709 words in ninety minutes at just over 96 words per minute.
The earliest competitions reflected real-world usage and drew mostly professional stenographers.
By the late 1880s, typewriting contests became increasingly intense, with a variety of people vying for the title of “fastest typist.” Robert Messenger relates part of this story here, and Bruce Bliven details the phenemenum in his book The Wonderful Writing Machine here. In the early 1900s, typewriter manufacturers employed speed typists for demonstrations and national contests. These competitions did not involve transcription, but merely copying texts.
Here’s footage of from a 1938 competition:
St Louis Post Dispatch (St. Louis), November 12, 1885 –
The Wichita Star, July 27, 1888 –
The Commercial Telegrapher’s Journal (Chicago), December 1938 –
© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
- See https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-courier-journal/189013678/[↩]