Though the name "Mavis Beacon" might not mean much to modern-day kids, to those who came of age in the late 1980s and 1990s, it surely does. "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" was a software program ...

Maybe you remember the grainy, pixelated nonsense letters to be copied down as fast as possible. Maybe you remember the gentle reminders to “Use all five fingers!” or “Try not to look at the keyboard.

Mavis Beacon, of “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing” fame, was never a real person; her image, however, became an icon of the software created by Software Toolworks. Les Crane, a former disc jockey and host ...