Birdie Reeve Kay

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Birdie Reeve Kay (born January 16, 1907 , † May 31, 1996 ) was an American typist, entertainer and chess player.

Life

Reeve lived in Chicago . She started typing when she was eight. She only attended school up to sixth grade. Since March 30, 1923, reports of her skills have appeared in national newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times .

She performed in variety theaters and gave courses in typing. She could recite and type at the same time the Gettysburg speech given by American President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 at high speed .

Reeve reached a speed of more than 200 words or 800 letters per minute and was named "World's Fastest Typist". She only used two fingers on each hand, which she spread in a V shape. Her father Thomas Reeve invented this tip system. She stated that she had achieved her skill by “studying words and not the typewriter”. She reported that she had a vocabulary of 64,000 words which she classified according to their endings. She wrote several dictionaries. In 1924, she appeared at an Associated Press event to analyze a speech by then President Calvin Coolidge . She sorted the words used in this speech according to their length.

Actor George Burns mentioned her variety number in his 1989 book All My Best Friends . He wrote: “If you could do anything better, faster, longer, more often, higher, worse or different than anyone else, then you could work in the variety show. For example, the 'world's fastest typist' made a grand entrance. She would type 200 words in a minute and then hand out the perfectly written pages to the audience for review. Finally, she would put a piece of sheet metal in the typewriter to imitate a drum roll or the click-clack sounds of an accelerating train. "

She was also a good chess player and gave simultaneous performances . It is reported that she was one of the top female American chess players in the late 1920s.

In 1931 Reeve had a daughter and ended her variety career. After a marriage failed, she later married Harry H. Kay. She became the owner and director of a shorthand services company in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago and typed many theses for students at the University of Chicago .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New York Times , July 11, 1923, p. 9, here after: Edward Winter: Chessnote 3612, appendix
  2. ↑ Washington Post , March 30, 1923, p. 20, here after: Edward Winter: Chessnote 3612, appendix
  3. ↑ The Washington Post , November 11, 1928, page A2, here after: here quoted from Edward Winter: Chessnote 3612, appendix
  4. ^ Words, Words , Time Magazine , December 1, 1924
  5. ↑ "If you could do anything better, faster, longer, more often, higher, worse or differently than anyone else, you could work in vaudeville. For example, 'The World's Fastest Typist' had a great act. She'd type 200 words a minute, then pass the perfectly typed pages out to the audience to be inspected. For her finish she'd put a piece of tin in her typewriter and imitate a drum roll or the clackety-clack of a train picking up speed. ", George Burns : All My Best Friends , New-York 1989, p. 58, here quoted from Edward Winter: Chessnote 3668 March 25, 2005
  6. ↑ Edward Winter: The brainiest ?, Chessnote 3612
  7. Jump up ↑ Champion typist Birdie Reeve Kay, Chicago Tribune obituary , June 6, 1996
personal data
SURNAME Reeve Kay, birdie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American typist, entertainer, and chess player
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1907
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1996