Mavis Beacon is a fictional female African-American character created for the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is an application software program for teaching touch typing. The typing program was initially released in late 1987 by The Software Toolworks and has been published regularly ever since. It was originally created by a team of developers from Software Toolworks...

 software.

History

Developed to be a anthropomorphic representation of a Software Toolworks

Mindscape

Mindscape is an international software publishing company, previously part of The Learning Company. They are now affiliated with EA . As of 2004, the group has offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. It has an annual turnover of €38 million and employs 150 people. Mindscape...

 instructional typing program, Mavis Beacon debuted as simply a photo of a model on the software's packaging in 1987. The model chosen to be the face of Mavis was Haitian

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

-born Renee Lesperance who was discovered by one of the software developers working behind the perfume counter at Saks 5th Avenue Beverly Hills in 1985. Mavis's name comes from a combination of Mavis Staples

Mavis Staples

Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer, actress and civil rights activist who recorded with The Staple Singers, her family's band.-Biography:...

, one of the software developer's favorite singers; and the word "beacon

Beacon

A beacon is an intentionally conspicuous device designed to attract attention to a specific location.Beacons can also be combined with semaphoric or other indicators to provide important information, such as the status of an airport, by the colour and rotational pattern of its airport beacon, or of...

"- an allusion to her role as a guide to typing.

There have been several models chosen to represent the confident efficiency of Mavis Beacon - her image changes to represent a "modern professional

Professional

A professional is a person who is paid to undertake a specialised set of tasks and to complete them for a fee. The traditional professions were doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and commissioned military officers. Today, the term is applied to estate agents, surveyors , environmental scientists,...

 typing instructor."

Because of Mavis Beacon's race, some computer software distributors, mostly but not exclusively, in the southwestern and southern United States, were initially reluctant to carry the computer software. However, once the popularity of the program became evident, many of these distributors reversed their decision and began to carry the line of software bearing Mavis Beacon's image.
This year is the 25th anniversary of the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing retail software product. Since its introduction, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing has been the best-selling typing software (according to NPD Group data).

Fame

Mavis Beacon has been seen as groundbreaking for being one of the first computer instruction characters and for being a female African-American embodiment of computer software, a field viewed as overwhelmingly white and male. Throughout the 1990s

1990s

File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...

 Mavis Beacon served as the computerized typing instructor at numerous American schools. As of 1998 she had instructed 6,000,000 school children. Mavis has been compared to American cultural icon

Cultural icon

A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...

 Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker AKA: batter witch is a cultural icon, as well as brand name and trademark of American Fortune 500 corporation General Mills. The name was first developed by the Washburn Crosby Company in 1921 as a way to give a personalized response to consumer product questions. The name Betty was...

 and has been called "the Betty Crocker of cyberspace".

Confusion

Mavis Beacon is often thought to be a living or historical figure by the public. This confusion has led many to contact the software developers seeking to speak to, interview or book Mavis for an event. Furthermore, as a result of Mavis Beacon's continuous use in computer typing software, and her image on millions of software boxes, many consumers

Consumer

Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...

 have reported confabulation

Confabulation

Confabulation is the process in which a memory is remembered falsely. Confabulations are indicative of a complicated and intricate process that can be led astray at any given point during encoding, storage, or recall of a memory. Two distinct types of confabulation are often distinguished...

s (false memories) of Mavis Beacon winning typing contests or appearing on talk shows.