Birdie Reeve Kay

Birdie Reeve Kay ( born January 16, 1907 † 31 May 1996) was a typist who acted as entertainer.

Reeve lived in Chicago. At eight years old she began to type. The school she attended only through the sixth grade. Since March 30, 1923 reports on their skills in national newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times have survived.

She performed in vaudeville theaters and gave courses in typewriting. You could in high speed, the Gettysburg speech that the American President Abraham Lincoln had held in 1863, recite and tap at the same time.

Reeve reached a speed of more than 200 words or 800 characters per minute and was " worlds fastest typist " ( "World's Fastest Typist " ) called. It used only two fingers of each hand, they spread in a V shape. This tip system had invented her father Thomas Reeve. She explained that they had reached their craft, by failing " words not studied the typewriter " ( " studying words and not the typewriter" ). She reported that she had a vocabulary of 64,000 words, which they classified according to their endings. She has written several dictionaries. In 1924, she performed at an event the Associated Press news agency to analyze a speech by the then President Calvin Coolidge. They sorted the words used in this speech according to their length.

Your vaudeville act has mentioned in his 1989 book All My Best Friends of actor George Burns. He wrote: " If there was anything better, faster, longer, more frequent, higher, worse or different than anyone else could do, then you could work in vaudeville. For example, had the world 's fastest typist ' a grand entrance. You would tap 200 words in one minute and then dish out the perfect written pages to the audience in order to have it verified. As a conclusion they would put in a piece of sheet metal into the typewriter to mimic a drum roll or the click-clack sounds of accelerating train. "

She was also a good chess player and gave simultaneous exhibitions. It is reported that it was towards the end of the 1920s, one of the best female U.S. chess players.

In 1931, Reeve had a daughter and ended her vaudeville career. After the failure of a marriage she later married Harry H. Kay. She was owner and manager of a company for stenographic services in the Chicago area of ​​Hyde Park and typed many theses for students of the University of Chicago.