THE TYPING TUTOR– ALL YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT MAVIS BACON.
Mavis Bacon Was The Best Print Educator In The United States Before She Disappeared. What’s The Twist? Beacon Wasn’t Real.
Mavis Beacon Is The Teacher Emeritus Of ‘mavis Beacon Teaches Typing,’ A Tutorial That Became A Bestseller After Its Launch In 1987. Clémence Michallon Documents The Icon-making Process. Mavis Beacon Is A Fictional Character Created For The Education Program ‘mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.’
A generation of adults has learned how to write.All thanks to Mavis Beacon. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, is a software tutorial which started in 1987 and quickly became a bestseller. To this day, adults who came of age in the 80s and 90s remember Mavis’ tutelage. Mavis comes up with a fond remembrance on social media; They are frequently referenced when bringing up the topic of writing. And people are often shocked to learn that the woman who taught them that skill – a character they remember from their childhood, someone they admired in some cases – never existed. Mavis Beacon was a made-up character, who grew up in an era when consumers were still learning how to interact with computers. Creating an avatar like Mavis was a way to make the program more accessible, and the interaction was more natural.
Mavis’ embodiment was a Haitian-born woman named Rene Lesperance, who was spotted behind a cosmetics counter on Saks Fifth Avenue by one of the men behind the company that sold Mavis Bacon teaches writing. A new documentary, The Hunt for Mavis Bacon, will examine the character’s legacy and attempt to locate L’Esperance, who never went out of sight in the mid-’90s.
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing was a product of the Software Toolworks, a video game and software developer founded in 1990 in Sherman Oaks, California, and now headquartered in Novato. The company had experimented with an anthropomorphic figure for The Chessmaster 2000, the first computer chess game in the Chessmaster series. This program was launched in 1986 with a package that features a beard, a long-haired wizard-like character like the titular chess character – actor Will Hare, according to an article written in 2015.
The first literature of ‘Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing’ was released in 1987
‘We felt that if you could believe you were playing another person, rather than a machine, that would make it more attractive,’ Joe Abrams, who later created the character Mavis Bacon with co-workers Lee Crane and Walt Belofsky, told interviewers.
It was Crane, a former late-night TV presenter who turned into the software industry in the 1980s, who discovered L’Esperance on Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. L’Esperance, born into a well-to-do Haitian family, has escaped François Duvalier’s regime, according to a Software Toolworks file that Belofsky read in the New York Times in a story in 1998. Joe continues: ‘She had never modeled before, and her extraordinarily long nails made her a writer.’ unexpected, but when Lis looked at her, he saw Mavis.’
Mavis Bacon was made, but to many people, it felt real. Adrian Hankin, director of public relations for Mindscape, a software company acquired in 1990 by The Software Toolworks, told The New York Times in 1998 — 11 years after the original Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing was launched — that she received a few calls a week for inquiries about Mavis reservations for speaker engagements. ‘Many reporters will call and ask for interviews,’ Hankin said.
‘The reaction of people who found out Mavis wasn’t real was shocking,’ Hankin told the interviers. ‘People seem to think she is a real teacher. And she is. She is real on a computer screen.’
Conviction that Mavis Beacon was a real person seemed to extend to the software industry itself. ‘I remember, at the Comdex computer trade show in 1987, I walked around and had some competitors from a couple of original print products come up to me and say, How did you get Mavis Beacon to endorse your product? We’ve been after her endorsement for years,’ Abrams said
Mavis wasn’t just a face on the packaging. As a character, it has been incorporated into the Mavis Beacon Teaching Typing game. Videos of the program in action show how users will be shown a specific set of keys, or asked to ‘introduce yourself to Mavis in the early satges.’
In November 1987, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing received a great review in The New York Times. Lewis, reviewer, Peter H. Lewis wrote, ‘Of the many good writing programs available, Mavis is the best we’ve seen,’ referring quickly to Mavis’ fictional identity. ‘I don’t know how they teach writing anywhere else in the world, but I do know that Mavis is light years ahead of the writing leader in my high school.’ More versions of the software have been released over the years; Still available today
Little is known about L’Esperance, her life and career. ‘We had some occasional contact until 1990, and she was thrilled about the success, and it’s starting to be recognized,’ Abrams told Vice in 2015. Abrams lost contact with L’Esperance after The Software Toolworks moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 1990. A 1995 story published in the Seattle Times stated that L’Esperance was living ‘quietly in the Caribbean.’ This is the last known update of its whereabouts and safety.
The team behind the research on Mavis Beacon asked for any potential clients and tips for L’Esperance or any of the other models who later embodied Mavis. ‘What find out was not on the know to us,’ Jones told Mashable. ‘And hopefully it’s a triumph story in which Renee L’Esperance is super scary, and she’s like, ‘Why did you bother me?’ I live wonderfully.’ Historians are also interested in hearing from people who have strong memories associated with the character and writing program. Some websites has been set up, as well as a hotline for people looking to share information.
