LONDON-Arttu Harkki, who set the Guinness World Record for texting in 2001, helped PalmOne Inc. launch its Treo 650 smart phone in the U.K. market by attempting to break the record for typing an e-mail on a phone using a QWERTY keyboard.
Harkki set a new record by typing a Guinness-approved message in 2 minutes 22.9 seconds. The phrase he typed was: “The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell (UK), who filed his patent for the telephone on 14 February 1876 at the New York Patent Office, USA. The first intelligible call occurred in March 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, when Bell phoned his assistant in a nearby room and said ‘Come here Watson, I want you.’ “
A Guinness World Records official said Harkki was asked to type the message using just the thumb on one hand in an effort to make sure the record is standard across all phone models.
Last year, a teen-ager from Utah claimed to have broken the world record for text messaging during a Leap Wireless International Inc.-sponsored contest. His time was less than 1 minute. The company said it planned to submit the results to the Guinness Book of World Records for verification.
