I know I can type 100 words a minute. I remember reading that 35 wpm is high speed for a morse code operator.
But that’s with a standard keyboard, sitting at a computer. On an iPhone I’m not very fast at all, and I have to look at what I’m typing (unlike on the keyboard which I can look away from and even hold a short conversation while continuing to type, depending on what I’m typing about).
So for iPhone users, taking notes on the fly, maybe morse code is faster.
That’s true, 35 wpm is pretty fast although by no means the fastest. But just to use it as a reference point for Morse, conversational speech in English runs at 100-120 words per minute. So a person can communicate in Morse about 1/4 to 1/3 the speed of normal speech. An average computer user types 25-40 wpm and professional typists run 50 to 80 wpm.
So your 100 wpm is pretty high, but Morse is a viable alternative unless absolute speech-speed communication is essential.
35 WPM is moderate speed for a CW operator. It seems “fast” for those who still hear individual letters of Morse code. For those who always complained about needing to learn Morse code at all to get their ham license, it seems absurdly fast.
But for those who *like* CW (ham slang for Morse code), 35 WPM is a nice, middle-of-the road conversational speed.
Somewhere between 35 to 40 WPM, if a CW op pushes himself hard enough, his brain quits hearing letters and starts hearing entire words. After that, you’re able to hear CW at speeds over 40 WPM pretty quickly. At my fastest, I was able to copy 48 WPM. What limited my ability to go faster was that I was a piss-poor typist at that age.
After I reached this point of “hearing whole words,” it actually became difficult for me to listen to slow CW - say, under 18 WPM, again. My attention would wander while I was waiting for the next letter... next thing I knew, I’d missed letters here and there.
Since then, I’ve become a touch typist, but I’ve not been back on the air working CW as I used to, so I don’t know how fast I could really go.
Here’s a writeup on Teddy McElroy and his blazing CW record(s):
http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/mcelroy.html
NB this typing speed — 150 WPM. That’s hauling right along.
The fastest guys I used to hear on 40 CW in the 70’s and 80’s were motoring along in the 55 WPM range. Most of them were still using “bugs” (Semi-automatic keys) and a few guys were starting to use iambic keyers (electronic boxes to make the dots/dashes).