The History of Typing Races, From Typewriters to Web

The Short Answer

All facts here come from public records, as of October 2026.

What a Speed Typing Contest Is

In a speed typing contest, people compete for the highest accurate typing speed.

The key word is accurate. From the start, errors counted against a typist, so raw speed alone never won.

Contests have taken many forms: long typewriter tests, short sprints, online races and even phone texting contests.

Wikipedia's entry on these contests includes a photo of the Dutch National Championship in 1954, with rows of typists at their machines.

The format changed with the technology. The goal of fast, clean typing stayed the same.

The Typewriter Era

Typing contests grew with the typewriter itself.

In the early 1900s, typing was a valuable office skill.

Typewriter makers had a clear interest in contests. A champion on their machine made good advertising.

As Tangora's story shows, companies featured champions in ads and sent them on tours.

Contests had divisions by length. Novices typed for 15 minutes, amateurs for 30, and professionals for a full 60 minutes.

That structure tells you something. Stamina mattered as much as speed.

Albert Tangora's Rise

I read Wikipedia's article on Albert Tangora, the best known typewriter champion.

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1903, he started learning to type in late 1916.

By April 1917, he won an Eastern States contest in Boston with 91 WPM over 15 minutes.

That October, he won the Novice division of the World's Championship in New York at 110 WPM.

He moved up to the 30 minute division, winning it in 1919 at 133 WPM.

Then he turned professional, placing fourth, then third, then third again in the 60 minute world championship.

The 1923 Record

On October 22, 1923, Tangora set the 60 minute world record at 147 WPM.

After a rest, he typed 159 words in a one minute sprint.

He used an Underwood Standard, a manual typewriter with a QWERTY keyboard.

An electric model eventually beat the 60 minute record in 1941. But Wikipedia says Tangora still holds the record on a manual typewriter.

Think about that. He kept up 147 words a minute for a full hour, on a machine where every single key had to be struck hard enough to swing a metal typebar up and print a letter through an inked ribbon onto paper.

Our post on typewriter WPM vs keyboard WPM explains why that's so hard.

Champions as Brand Ambassadors

Typing champions were stars of a sort.

Tangora appeared in ads for both the Underwood Typewriter Company and the Royal Typewriter Company.

In the early 1920s, he toured the United States for Underwood, giving typing demonstrations at schools, colleges and businesses.

Later, he worked for Royal in New York.

In 1936, he insured his hands for $100,000.

Before contests, he dipped his fingers in a mix of talcum powder and alum. It's an odd detail, but it shows how seriously top typists took every edge.

Comebacks and Later Records

Tangora didn't stop after 1923.

After temporarily retiring, he returned to contests sponsored by the International Commercial Schools Association.

In 1937, he set that association's record at 141 WPM on a Royal typewriter. He later beat it with 142 WPM.

In all, he won that competition seven times.

He also wrote a booklet called Fifty Common Typing Faults and How To Avoid Them.

During World War II, he served in the US Naval Reserve and taught typing classes in the Navy. A film, Albert Tangora in Action, shows his posture, arm position and warm ups.

The Electric Typewriter Changes Things

Electric typewriters reduced the force needed for each key.

That's why Tangora's 60 minute record fell to an electric model in 1941.

Lighter keys meant faster fingers.

The same pattern repeated later with computer keyboards, where each new generation of lighter, shorter key travel let skilled typists push their numbers a little higher than the generation before them.

That's also why comparing typists across eras is tricky. The machine shapes the result almost as much as the person.

A manual typewriter record and a modern keyboard record measure different things.

Barbara Blackburn and the Dvorak Layout

Typing records didn't end with typewriter contests.

One famous later name is Barbara Blackburn, often listed as one of the fastest typists ever recorded.

She typed on the Dvorak layout rather than QWERTY, which made her story popular with layout enthusiasts.

We covered her records, and how they were measured, in our post on Barbara Blackburn and typing world records.

Her era bridged old style tests and the computer age, before online races changed competitive typing again.

TypeRacer Brings Racing Online

In March 2008, programmer Alex Epshteyn launched TypeRacer, according to Wikipedia's TypeRacer entry.

He built it because the Windows program he used to learn touch typing had no multiplayer mode.

In TypeRacer, players race small cars that move as they type quotes from songs, films and books.

Errors must be fixed before you can continue. That keeps the old contest rule alive: accuracy first.

PC Magazine listed it among its Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites of 2008.

Online racing made contests instant. For the first time, a teenager at home could race a stranger on another continent at midnight, with no hall, no judges and no typewriter company paying for the event.

The Ultimate Typing Championship

Online racing soon led back to live events.

The Ultimate Typing Championship was created by keyboard maker Das Keyboard to find the fastest typists in the US.

Players qualified through online typing races. Finalists competed in person at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

The first final was held on March 14, 2010. Sean Wrona beat Nate Bowen 163 to 110 WPM on a 574 word text, then 124 to 79 on a harder text.

Wrona won the title and a $2,000 first prize.

The 2020 Final

The championship came back in 2020, again as a best of three final.

Sean Wrona, the 2010 winner, faced a typist known as Chak.

Chak won all three races: 182.6 to 175.2 WPM, then 210.4 to 183.8, then 180.7 to 172.3.

Compare that with Tangora's 147 WPM hour in 1923, and you can see how far speeds have climbed.

The tests aren't the same. Of course not.

Still, the jump shows how keyboards and training have pushed the limits.

What a Century of Racing Teaches

I compared the contest rules across these eras, and a few lessons repeat.

Accuracy always counts. Typewriter contests penalized errors, and TypeRacer won't let you skip them.

Practice builds speed. Tangora went from novice to world champion in about seven years.

Technique matters. Posture, arm position and warm ups were part of his teaching film.

Equipment helps, but only so much. Better keys raise the ceiling. They don't replace practice.

Those lessons apply to any typist today.

Racing Today

Today, anyone can join a typing race in seconds.

Multiplayer race sites match you with players around the world. Private rooms let friends race each other.

The rules would look familiar to Tangora: type fast, type clean, and keep going.

If you want to improve, our TypeRacer tips cover habits that help in any race.

And if you just want to try one, you can start a typing race on TypingFastest and see where you stand.

Our Take

Typing races are older than most people think. They began over a century ago, on heavy manual typewriters, in halls full of competitors.

Albert Tangora's 147 WPM hour in 1923 still stands on a manual machine.

TypeRacer moved racing online in 2008, and the Ultimate Typing Championship brought it back to a live stage.

The tools changed completely. The contest didn't. It's still about who can type fastest without making mistakes.

Simple. And it's lasted a century.