Thomas Edison's 146 question interview for prospective employees

http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/thomas-edisons-146-question-knowledge-test-for-prospective-employees.html

by miket • 11 years ago

108 75 11 years ago

paulsutter• 11 years ago

Google and the Internet have really changed our view on what is important to memorize. Interview questions today are more oriented towards behavioral quesitons and problem solving.

   1. What countries bound France?
   2. What city and country produce the finest china?
   ...
   145. What is the heaviest kind of wood?
   146. What is the lightest wood?

Edit: incidentally, I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity. A curious person might have encountered a lot more trivia than a noncurious person. I've found curiosity trumps raw iq for creative problem solving, it drives a person to dig deeper into a problem.

hayksaakian• 11 years ago

I wonder if google search could pass this interview.

CatsoCatsoCatso• 11 years ago

It does surprisingly poorly. I ran the bottom 15 questions through a rudimentary web scraper & recorded Google's 'knowledge box' responses.

http://www.sharecsv.com/s/1a4ebb9acec12392376164b7e770b54f/E...

I'm surprised it doesn't have an instant answer for the heaviest and lightest woods. Some of its answers don't quite get the question either. What are violin strings made of? Well we can be sure it's not cat guts. How is glucose made? We're only told the make up of it.

Full list of Questions converted to Google queries: http://pastebin.com/wsr7UrGK I'm not going to run the full list because I don't want Google thinking I'm a robot for the rest of the day (Captcha will trigger for my network).

cowardlydragon4• 11 years ago

Watson?

IndianAstronaut• 11 years ago

I don't think it is happening quick enough. College education systems still revolve heavily around memorizing. Getting into medical school is a test of who can cram the most into their heads.

ealexhudson• 11 years ago

With medicine, you really don't have time to go Google something. Even in a slow-paced assessment, you need to gather data quickly and effectively, and make decisions. Patients might in the future be happy filling out long series of probing questions and then waiting for a few hours/days while someone does some Googling, but I doubt it. The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now.

hf• 11 years ago

It is astonishing to me, how widespread fisher-wife's-tale-level conceptions about fundamental aspects of our existence are.

I devoutly hope that you are not, upon contemplation, equate a well-versedness in general knowledge with mindless memorization. Is emergent behaviour of neural networks really that alien a concept? Is it possible to believe, in all earnestness, that factoids such as these remain isolated and inactive in your memory until recalled?

These questions aren't there to test your ability to learn atomic facts without rhyme or reason. These questions, pitiful as they may seem, try to probe the breadth of your mental landscape.

roel_v• 11 years ago

Well, actually, according to Edison's defense of his test as linked to in the OP, he did try to gauge one's ability for rote memorization, and he didn't care about whether people knew about things beyond their immediate job. His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them.

coupdejarnac• 11 years ago

You might be right about testing the breadth of one's knowledge, but, for me, this test reminds me of the Mensa tests in Reader's Digest and other magazines from years past. The Mensa tests seemed like they were designed to be just easy enough to get several right answers, thereby piquing the interest of the test taker. Maybe you are smart enough to be in Mensa! Maybe you are smart enough to work at Edison! This test strikes me as 1920s era gamification.

SilasX• 11 years ago

Knowledge of the factoids Edison regarded as important is not the same as breadth of knowledge. There is far too much to know to capture it in a short test like this.

robin_reala2• 11 years ago

I like the fact that the answer to number 1 has changed since 1921.

philwelch• 11 years ago

How so? Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra, and Monaco bound France and have all done so since before 1921.

VLM• 11 years ago

They strike me as interview discussion questions not simple memorization.

Take the numerous distance calculations. Great circle? Theoretical tunnel thru the earth? Traditional maritime shipping routes or aircraft navigation routes which take into account prevailing winds and international boundaries etc? Oh so you produced a number which happens to be correct, here is a slide rule and the geographic coordinates I used, you can demonstrate spherical geometry to me now.

Perhaps some ageism was involved although hard to tell if it was enforced to eliminate old people or young people, such as "deepest depth of the ocean". Data points that have stabilized in recent decades were not stable a century ago. How deep you think the ocean is depends a lot on when you learned how deep the ocean is, at least back then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench

skywhopper• 11 years ago

For what it's worth, some actual intelligence tests from the period were remarkably similar, if a little easier. For example this group of (supposedly) actual questions from an Army IQ test ca WWI: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5293

thearn4• 11 years ago

Interesting, it's basically trivia instead of an aptitude test. The ASVAB is certainly an improvement.

jpwagner• 11 years ago

Certainly it paints a picture of what was considered common knowledge and what was learned in schools at that time.

Another thought is that there are a couple of different types of memorization going on here. For example no one memorizes a list of bordering states/countries; answers to those questions would indicate the strength of photographic memory.

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

I doubt most of these facts were taught in schools - which is probably the point.

Finding answers to questions like these was difficult pre-Internet.

You'd only have a chance of getting them right if you read very widely all the time, and remembered most of what you read.

If I was competing with Edison and I genuinely thought his employees were able to ace that test, I'd be seriously worried, trivia or no.

In reality they probably couldn't. Only a very tiny percentage of the population is going to have the wide interests and the eidetic recall needed to ace this list.

mrcactu5• 11 years ago

  incidentally, I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity

This test is ahead of its time and it is perfectly consistent with what we understand about Thomas Edison. I doubt anyone memorized the answers to this test - he is looking for signs of creativity.

Edison's formula: Invention is going to come from trying 99 dead ends to find the 1% that works.

hackuser• 11 years ago

I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity.

He is measuring raw ability to recall. He explains it here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D813...

yzh• 11 years ago

It would be really nice if there is a Cave Johnson's interview for prospective employees. It will be like: "I'm Cave Johnson, I own the place. Your test assignment will vary, depending on the manner in which you have bent the world to your will."

lurkinggrue2• 11 years ago

All right, so that last test was seriously disappointing. Apparently, being civil isn't motivating you, so let's try it her way, all right, fatty? Adopted... fatty! Fatty, fatty no parents?

iamshariq• 11 years ago

I find it strange they're all WHAT, WHO & WHERE questions?

None of them are HOW and WHY questions.

Which, arguably, can give a better insight of a person's talent or intellect or his world view.

salvadors• 11 years ago

Edison defended this approach in the New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D813...

angersock2• 11 years ago

What? There are clearly questions asking about how sulfuric acid is made, how glass is made, how to make paint, and so forth.

doxcf434• 11 years ago

Watching the recent PBS documentary on Edison was pretty amazing just how easy it is to connect to his mentality and astonishing challenges, and investors like SV today, calling him the original Jobs or Musk is really an understatement. Once you solve the 40yr problem of the incandescent light bulb, oh then you just need to knock out a power plant, grid, internal wiring and digging up the streets to get your product to market. Mean while JP Morgen him self is breathing down your neck the whole time. Amazing. ;)

Great documentary can be found here: ;) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/edison/

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

I thought the interesting bit about the light bulb was that Edison recognized the reality that it was a systems problem (electric lighting), not a product problem (light bulb).

Finding a long-lasting bulb filament was, to Edison, basically an implementation detail. But he knew it wouldn't catch on without a full system to power it that was mechanically and economically sustainable.

It's analogous to Apple's approach to a smartphone. The iPhone succeeded not just because it was a good piece of hardware running a good OS, but because of the systems that supported it. When it launched, iTunes was running on a ton of computers already thanks to the iPod, so that's how Apple synced personal data and updated the OS.

And then when they released the SDK, they again took a systems approach--not just a collection of APIs to build apps, but a whole networked and managed online store for qualifying, distributing, and updating the apps.

M8• 11 years ago

...

147. Would you be OK with getting electrocuted with AC to show it's danger?

148. Would you be willing to hand over your inventions?

149. Would you be OK with verbal non-committing payment contracts?

anon4• 11 years ago

As Einstein said after reading this same questionnaire:

"I do not think I can pass the interview and be hired and after seeing it, I don't think I want to."

puranjay• 11 years ago

A counter argument would be that this ad probably wasn't for the kind of employee Einstein would make. Edison was probably hiring well read, smart folks for regular jobs, not geniuses breaking new ground in narrow scientific domains.

I doubt such geniuses were digging through job ads to apply to Edison's company in the first place. If they were in need of jobs, they would probably be recruited heavily directly from university departments.

So yeah. This ad probably wasn't meant for Einstein. Which gives us no reason to think that "it's a bad ad because even Einstein couldn't solve it".

byuu• 11 years ago

It looks more to me like Edison was trying to recruit high school history teachers. But, he was quite successful, so I guess it worked out well for him, eh?

Luc• 11 years ago

That's strange, I can't find any reference to this. Where did you get it?

In Isaacson's biography there's mention of Einstein's visit to Boston, where he defends the value of a college education and he 'fails' one of the Edison-test questions about the speed of sound ('I do not carry such information in my mind, since it is readily available in books.').

lurkinggrue2• 11 years ago

That was also my reaction to reading the quiz.

lake99• 11 years ago

While technology and politics have rendered many of his answers obsolete, a few of his answers would be considered quite outrageous now:

134. Who discovered the Pacific Ocean?

Balboa.

And what of the people living by it for millennia?

(From http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/take-the-intelligence-test-th...)

svachalek• 11 years ago

Actually try Google, it still gives that answer in 2015.

agounaris• 11 years ago

I think I wouldn't like Edison...not that he cares :P

mrits• 11 years ago

I was hoping there would be something about medicine that is now completely inaccurate. The best I could find was lead as a critical ingredient in making the best white paint.

hownottowrite• 11 years ago

In-depth article (with comments by Edison) from Scientific American November 1921. See page 16

https://books.google.com/books?id=rYQ3AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA181&ots...

yesiamyourdad2• 11 years ago

The TL;DR for those too lazy to click and would rather speculate: Edison's reasoning was that he wanted to hire executives who could make decisions quickly and recall information quickly and reliably. Edison wanted the kind of information access that's available to everyone in this day and age. Since there were no machines to do it, he had to hire people to do it for him.

It is difficult for people living today to understand what information was like even 25 years ago. We absolutely look at information differently now because our storage, retrieval, and processing methods have advanced so fast that to look back a hundred years and try to understand their thinking we might as well be looking at the stone age. Try it sometime. Swear off the Internet for a week and try to be productive in your job.

As to whether Einstein would have done well at this test, Einstein would have made a lousy business executive, especially by Edison's metric as Einstein was notoriously forgetful.

This interesting stuff to me personally. My great-grandfather worked directly for Edison. At one point he managed a brick-making factory. He died long before I came along but I've always wondered what it was like to work closely with Edison.

mariodiana• 11 years ago

But being able to answer the questions on the test doesn't show that you studied and memorized the answers; rather, it demonstrates that you have a lifelong habit of sucking up information.

snorkel• 11 years ago

I wonder if he handed this questionnaire only to the people he had no intention of hiring anyway just as a polite way of saying "No, thanks"

spiritplumber2• 11 years ago

Sadly that's pretty much how "comprehension tests" in the South worked in order to keep black people from voting.

jqm• 11 years ago

Maybe a comprehension test isn't a bad idea. It would probably keep just as many whites from voting nowadays as well.

raheemm• 11 years ago

Edison's response to the critics - http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D813...

LgWoodenBadger• 11 years ago

If Thomas Edison is so smart, how come he's dead?

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

I can't answer many of these. But it looks like they are supposed to be 'common knowledge' of the day. Little more than 'have you been paying attention' kind of questions.

Aardwolf• 11 years ago

Why would you need to know these things to work for an electrical/technological company?

Scientific or technological questions would be more appropriate. Sure, there are a few, but knowing the name of who invented something doesn't mean you understand it...

tamersalama• 11 years ago

Answers to those questions indicate an inquisitive mind. An aptitude that would possibly make a technology company thrive. It's not for what they know - it's for what led them to know it.

cowardlydragon4• 11 years ago

How do you attempt to discredit your competitor's technology using any and all methods including for example mass electrocuting dogs?

AnkhMorporkian• 11 years ago

"Electrocute an elephant?"

"I'm sorry, we're looking for original ideas. Next applicant!"

X-combinator• 11 years ago

All the answers are here(Cheat if you must?):

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/take-the-intelligence-test-th...

achr2• 11 years ago

Answers from the era. Would be interesting to note the changes.

bhz• 11 years ago

I know 122.. Mötley Crüe!

Thomas Edison's 146 question interview for prospective employees

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