Fact · Typing and writing speed
52hours
Dvorak reported that retraining the Navy typists to the Dvorak layout took an average of 52 hours to bring their Dvorak speed up to their QWERTY speed.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“it took an average of only 52 hours of training for those typists' speeds on the Dvorak keyboard to reach their average speeds on the qwerty keyboard”
The Dvorak Keyboard, J. C. Bowen, MIT personal web page, n.d., Navy study, 1944.
Open the original- What it measures
- This is the training time behind Dvorak's speed claim. The later GSA study reported a much longer retraining time (see the fact on 100 hours).
- What it does not show
- The figure is Dvorak's own report of an experiment whose results were later challenged.