The history of typing speed measurement is inseparable from the history of the keyboard itself. The QWERTY layout, which this and nearly every typing test uses, was designed by Christopher Latham Sholes and patented in 1878 as part of the Remington No. 2 typewriter. Contrary to popular myth, QWERTY was not designed to slow typists down to prevent jamming. Rather, Sholes iteratively refined the layout to reduce the frequency of adjacent typebar collisions by separating commonly paired letters. The resulting layout became so entrenched through decades of typist training that it persists virtually unchanged on modern keyboards, despite the mechanical jamming problem being irrelevant since the advent of electronic keyboards.

Words per minute (WPM) is the standard metric for typing speed, but its calculation is less straightforward than it appears. The standard method defines a "word" as 5 characters (including spaces), regardless of actual word length. This standardization, adopted by typing competitions and certification programs, ensures fair comparison across different texts. Gross WPM counts all characters typed divided by 5 divided by the test duration in minutes. Net WPM (also called corrected WPM) subtracts errors: Net WPM = Gross WPM minus (uncorrected errors / test duration in minutes). Professional typists typically achieve 65-75 WPM, while the average computer user types 40-45 WPM. The world record for sustained typing speed, set by Stella Pajunas in 1946, is 216 WPM on an IBM electric typewriter.

The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, patented by August Dvorak and William Dealey in 1936, was designed using letter frequency analysis and finger movement studies to minimize finger travel distance. Dvorak places the most common English letters (A, O, E, U, I, D, H, T, N, S) on the home row, where fingers naturally rest, compared to QWERTY's home row (A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, L). Studies have shown that on QWERTY, the home row accounts for only about 32% of keystrokes in typical English text, while Dvorak's home row handles approximately 70%. Despite these ergonomic advantages, controlled studies comparing experienced typists on both layouts have shown surprisingly modest speed differences (typically 5-10% faster on Dvorak), suggesting that the neural adaptation built from years of practice on any layout is more important than the layout's theoretical optimality.

The motor learning science behind typing involves a progression from conscious control to automaticity. Beginning typists engage the prefrontal cortex for each keystroke, consciously recalling key positions. With practice, control shifts to the basal ganglia and cerebellum, brain regions responsible for automatic motor sequences. Expert typists do not think about individual keys; instead, they process text in chunks of words or phrases, with their fingers executing learned motor programs. This automaticity is why experienced typists can maintain a conversation while typing and why disrupting automatic processing (such as asking a fast typist to type slowly and deliberately) actually increases errors.

Touch typing, the technique of typing without looking at the keyboard, was popularized by Frank Edward McGurrin in 1888, who demonstrated its superiority over the hunt-and-peck method in a famous public typing contest. The technique relies on proprioception, the body's sense of the relative position of its parts, to locate keys by feel rather than sight. Developing touch typing proficiency typically requires 20-40 hours of deliberate practice.