Career
He was a court stenographer at Salt Lake City who taught typing classes. The results were displayed on the front pages of many newspapers. Whether McGurrin was actually the first person to touch type, or simply the first to be popularly noticed, is disputed.
The following interesting story of how Mr.
McGurrin came to operate the typewriter by "touch" is thus told in his own word:
Mr. Theodore C. Rose, Vice-President of the International Convention of Shorthand Writers, at the meeting at Chicago on September 1, 1881, made the following reference to Mr.
McGurrin"s work: "I would say that in the past week I was in the office of Walsh & Ford, in Grand Rapids, and that a young man in their office, on a test, wrote ninety-seven words on the type-writer, and read the copy. He did not look at the machine, at all, but kept his eye on the copy.
I know he wrote ninety-seven words in a minute, because I held the watch." This utterance is also notable because it is probably the first reference to what we now know as the "touch system" contained in the reports of any of the conventions.
