It was considered good if you could read 300 words a minute; the average was somewhere around 250. I maxed out the machine (at around 5,000 wpm, if I recall) and of course the teacher thought I was faking it. So she tested me on the content and I aced it. She couldn't believe it. But I proved it numerous times afterward, and not just to her but to other teachers as well.
It is reported that JFK could read up to 20,000 wpm.
When I was taking the course, they said that two things slowed one down when reading. The first was the eyes’ tendency to flick back and forth over words already read. By forcing the eye to follow the pacing hand, that factor is eliminated. The second thing that slows one down is the ‘need’ to say the word to oneself as it is read. If you can break that habit, you are limited by how many words are on a page, since more time is spent turning the page than actually reading it. The best in our class was at 10,000 words per minute at something like 95% comprehension.
I know I was able to reread a whole quarter’s of assigned texts (four or five books) a half hour before the final.
He just could not write them.
We had a speed reading course like that back in 1961, Carlsbad NM high school. I got pretty fast as a reader, but sometimes I still slow way down for certain writing styles and tech manuals.