#MAVIS BEACON LEARN TO TYPE HOW TO#
#MAVIS BEACON LEARN TO TYPE SOFTWARE#

Other models eventually replaced her on the packaging. L'Esperance, originally from Haiti, allegedly moved back to the Caribbean in the '90s to live a quiet life, according to a decades-old article in the Seattle Times.

She was discovered while working as a salesperson at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills in the '80s and paid $500 for a one-time photoshoot, according to Abrams. Her identity is known and she has a name that rivals Mavis Beacon's in memorability and grandeur: Renée L'Esperance. There was a real Mavis, sort of: the real-life model for the cover of the software. Which is where the second twist comes in. To this day, former students who learn their beloved typing coach was no more real than Betty Crocker still routinely face the dizzying jolt that accompanies losing a childhood hero. 'I mean, there's no reason that you wouldn't.' I'm pretty sure my dad did too,' Alex Handy, the founder of the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, says. Or maybe she ran a school?Īs one Philadelphia man put it, back in the '90s: 'There really is no Mavis? I can't believe it.'

Some swore they'd seen her at typing competitions. For some, a kind of shared false memory, or Mandela Effect, took hold.

#MAVIS BEACON LEARN TO TYPE HOW TO#

That ambiguity was enough for devotees of the game to build a mystique around the woman they thought was teaching them how to clank quickly and accurately away on their keyboards.

#MAVIS BEACON LEARN TO TYPE SOFTWARE#

'We just said that she was our symbol of excellence, and that became more of a marketing slogan,' Joe Abrams, who ran Software Toolworks with Walt Bilofsky at the time, explains. (It was later acquired by Pearson, the educational media behemoth.) Many over the decades came to believe in her as a living, breathing teacher and the folks at Software Toolworks didn't try too hard to clarify that wasn't so. 'Mavis' was simply the image on the cover of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, a software program developed by Software Toolworks in the 1980s. As Jim once complimented Pam, arguably one of the most famous characters ever to hold down a typing-centric job: 'Mavis Beacon doesn't even type 90!' In the many years since, she's come to represent excellence in typing, used as a shorthand for speed everywhere from the Tonight Show to The Office. Her creators named her Mavis Beacon and she would go on to teach a generation to type with her trademark tranquility while coaching millions of students through the basics of QWERTY. The world's most famous typing teacher was born in a garage in Sherman Oaks, Calif., more than three decades ago.

Grab your magnifying glass and get ready to investigate as Mashable uncovers Big/Little Mysteries.

Mavis beacon learn to type