She created and marketed a system said to increase a reader's speed over the average reading rate of 250 to 300 words a minute by a factor of three to ten times, or more, while preserving and even improving comprehension.

[7][6] Wood said she initiated her own study of the habits of naturally fast readers after watching a professor flip through her master's thesis at surprisingly high speed before asking her questions that, she said, indicated perfect comprehension.

[8] Later she worked for nine years as a teacher and girls' counselor at Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah south of Salt Lake City.

Their company, Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, was initially based in the Washington, DC, area but quickly expanded to 32 cities.

Early coverage of the method in Time magazine accepted all of Wood's claims as factual, and other major news outlets were equally uncritical.

[10][11] Early on, an educator at the Harvard Business School raised questions about the validity of Wood's data, but these were largely ignored.

While reorganizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Famous Artists, since renamed FAS International, sold the speed-reading concern to venture capitalists.

The company arranged for President Jimmy Carter and his family to take an Evelyn Wood course, taught by a franchiser, at the White House.

Graduates of the course included actor Burt Lancaster, astronaut John Glenn, Queen Ingrid of Denmark, and Senator Edward M.

They recommended the system on a 1961 ABC-TV news program, and Proxmire, who once claimed a reading speed of 20,000 words per minute, allowed his endorsement and image to be used for years afterwards in Evelyn Wood advertisements.