This is fun.
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/take-the-intelligence-test-that-thomas-edison-gave-to-j-1689489019
Take The Intelligence Test That Thomas Edison Gave to Job Seekers
Today tech companies are infamous for asking silly questions at job interviews.
How would I move Mount Fuji? If I knew that I probably wouldn't be sitting here
for this job interview, would I, Microsoft?
But companies like Apple and Facebook don't put employees through anything
quite as exhausting as Thomas Edison's test for potential employees. It was
filled with trivia largely considered irrelevant to any job under Edison, but
the quiz was all anyone could talk about when the questions leaked in the
Spring of 1921. And if you're a trivia masochist you can take the test below.
Americans obsessed over the test following publication of many questions in the
May 11, 1921 New York Times. From there the test was debated, copied, and
parodied in newspapers and magazines around the country. By May 13, 1921 a full
146 test questions and answers, as remembered by two applicants with apparently
fantastic memories, was published in the Times.
Everybody had an opinion on the test, and those who scored well weren't shy to
tell you about it. However, those who did well were definitely in the minority.
The Chicago Tribune sent reporters down to the University of Chicago to see how
students would fare. They asked them each 20 questions and nobody did well.
Male students averaged a score of just 35 percent. Female students? Just 28
percent. The newspaper warned that this was a sign that kids these days were
getting dumber.
Reporters even quizzed Albert Einstein, who was said to have failed Edison's
quiz for not knowing the speed of sound off the top of his head. Edison's
youngest son Theodore, a student at MIT, did poorly as well when questioned by
a visiting reporter. But according to the Edison biography by Randall Stross,
the elder Edison assured his son he had guaranteed employment anyway.
Ironically, Edison was said to have created the test because he was frustrated
with college-educated applicants looking for work who didn't have the proper
knowledge.
As the National Parks Service points out, the test was changed multiple times
after it leaked with the answers. But that didn't stop Americans from
discussing the test as if it were the ultimate barometer of intelligence, and
comparing notes on how well they did.
Want to take the test for yourself? Be my guest. But remember that you have to
answer as if you're living in 1921. Which, even with Google, is a bit tough. If
you want to cheat, go ahead and skip to the bottom, where we've supplied the
answers as they appeared in the New York Times. Any odd spellings have been
maintained.
Questions
1. What countries bound France?
2. What city and country produce the finest china?
3. Where is the River Volga?
4. What is the finest cotton grown?
5. What country consumed the most tea before the war?
6. What city in the United States leads in making laundry machines?
7. What city is the fur centre of the United States?
8. What country is the greatest textile producer?
9. Is Australia greater than Greenland in area?
10. Where is Copenhagen?
11. Where is Spitzbergen?
12. In what country other than Australia are kangaroos found?
13. What telescope is the largest in the world?
14. Who was Bessemer and what did he do?
15. How many states in the Union?
16. Where do we get prunes from?
17. Who was Paul Revere?
18. Who was John Hancock?
19. Who was Plutarch?
20. Who was Hannibal?
21. Who was Danton?
22. Who was Solon?
23. Who was Francis Marion?
24. Who was Leonidas?
25. Where did we get Louisiana from?
26. Who was Pizarro?
27. Who was Bolivar?
28. What war material did Chile export to the Allies during the war?
29. Where does most of the coffee come from?
30. Where is Korea?
31. Where is Manchuria?
32. Where was Napoleon born?
33. What is the highest rise of tide on the North American Coast?
34. Who invented logarithms?
35. Who was the Emperor of Mexico when Cortez landed?
36. Where is the Imperial Valley and what is it noted for?
37. What and where is the Sargasso Sea?
38. What is the greatest known depth of the ocean?
39. What is the name of a large inland body of water that has no outlet?
40. What is the capital of Pennsylvania?
41. What state is the largest? Next?
42. Rhode Island is the smallest state. What is the next and the next?
43. How far is it from New York to Buffalo?
44. How far is it from New York to San Francisco?
45. How far is it from New York to Liverpool?
46. Of what state is Helena the capital?
47. Of what state is Tallahassee the capital?
48. What state has the largest copper mines?
49. What state has the largest amethyst mines?
50. What is the name of a famous violin maker?
51. Who invented the modern paper-making machine?
52. Who invented the typesetting machine?
53. Who invented printing?
54.
