On 25 November 1998 Les Stewart from Mudjimba (Australia) after 16 years at the typewriter reached his goal of typing all numbers from one to one million – in words (not numbers) on his manual machine. Seven manual typewriters, 1000 ink ribbons, 19,890 pages, 16 years and seven months later, he finished with the lines---Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.one million.

Of course it is a World Record for Typing Numbers in Words but it could easily win a prize for most useless and stupidest book ever written. He typed for 20 minutes, “every waking hour”, on the hour until the mammoth task he had set himself was done. But perhaps more bizarre than his world record achievement, is the fact that Les threw out all but two of the 19,890 pages he typed over those fifteen years. He only kept the first and the last pages.

When asked why he has undertaken this time consuming and repetitious task, Les says that he has little else to do now after he has been classed as an invalid due to an accident, and could no longer work.


|