The Great Typing Controversy on Letterman, January 24 and 28, 1985

Barbara Blackburn, crowned the "World's Fastest Typist," appeared on the January 24 broadcast and participated in a typing contest with Production Assistant Barbara Gaines. Stuff happened, and on the following new show, January 28, top forensic experts demonstrated what went wrong.

[@nothingtodo58]

The producers were expecting a relatively boring segment of a woman typing fast.

[@redmed10]

there was a second typist on the grassy knoll.

[@legiaexcele6111]

Hello, you absolute legends.

[@WaldoBagelTopper]

"This smacks of organized crime" 😂😂 Letterman was always great.

[@ka-powUSA]

I barely graduated from high school because I stayed up watching this greatness every night.

[@bipcuds]

It's pretty impressive, because she was translating the Balk Rule into Elvish on the fly!

[@edwarddejong8025]

I took typing in high school, and our teacher was the WWII typing pool champion, which made her the best typist out of thousands of good typists. Back then there was no Xerox machine, so copying of documents was done with carbon paper (max 5 copies), and brute force retyping. Obviously accuracy with speed was important during the War. She could do 140 WPM on a manual typewriter which is amazing.

[@dpunk8047]

I lost it when Dave noticed there was no paper. Hilarious.

[@renhoek3851]

That was fantastic, you would never see such imaginative material anywhere else, these old letterman shows are pure gold!

[@peacecitizen1]

I think what I appreciate most about David Letterman especially back then was the mileage he got out of this spot. On most late night shows she would have been a 5-minute curiosity guest where they would have said: "This lady says she can type real fast."

[@TeeVeeGames]

Another example of why Letterman's show was brilliant in the 80's.

[@toddmarshall7573]

2:18

[@js2010ish]

No one else seems to have said it, but what a Beautiful ragtime-y rendition of "Barbara Ann," especially on the second go-through (the band seems a little more relaxed).

[@voyager9028]

When I took typing class in high school, all the key caps were blank. You learned the whereabouts of a few letters at a time. I remember exercises such as "asdfgf asdfgf." Eventually, you had the whole keyboard memorized. Today I am still a fast typist. Surprisingly, I would find it difficult to name the keys on each row without looking. My fingers, however, know every key and will type away with very few mistakes. Is that "muscle memory"?

[@davidgibson7044]

Dave nursed a minute of nonsense, into a 18 minute bit of comedy gold.

[@jackleonardo2167]

@Don Giller thank you for putting together these clips. Appreciate your work and the patience you put on it. Plus taking the time to answer people’s comments, again, very rare for channel owners to do that.

[@prmaninla]

I love when the dramatic music plays the first time with the semi-close up of her portrait and Dave has that embarrassed smile and great look on his face "I can't believe we're doing this..." This is gold.

[@MegAndJas]

They're using IBM Selectric 875 golfball typewriters, I was a service engineer repairing these machines in the UK (and their predecessors and later models) from when I left school in the early 70's till the mid 90's when word processors/computers became the norm. I thought I had a job for life, just shows how things change!

[@wecontrolthevideo]

They are both named Barbara, so Paul plays Barbara Ann, while they type!

[@Kubakaiser]

Just laughed my ass off. I can't believe how absurdly perfect these shows were.