Immigrants passing through Ellis Island in the early 1900s were given a series of tests to prove their fitness as citizens. Prospective immigrants were turned back for tuberculosis, cholera, nail fungus, and especially an eye infection known as trachoma. They were also turned back for mental deficiency.
Genius Tester #8: Houses and Utilities
There are three houses and three utilities: electric, water, and gas. Each house is linked to all three utilities, but no lines cross, none is shared, and none passes through houses or utilities. Can you draw all nine lines? Hint: The world is not flat.
But how were immigration officials to test mental acuity in a population that spoke little English?
Dr. Howard Knox solved this problem with five small black cubes.* He lined up four cubes on a table in front of the person being tested and then, like the game Simon Says, used the fifth cube to tap patterns on the four resting cubes. Using sign language, he asked prospective immigrants to reproduce the patterns by tapping the correct cubes. Here is the sequence he used:
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4,3
1,2,3,4,2
1,3,2,4
1,3,4,2,3,1
Respectively, Knox said these sequences should be able to be performed by a four, five, six, eight, and eleven year old. In a 1914 article charmingly titled “The Moron and the Study of Alien Defectives,” Knox wrote, “I present this paper, based on tests which I have made on over 4,000 suspected defectives in the last eighteen months … all were considered sufficiently near the required standard to be allowed to pass, except 400 certified as feeble-minded and (in a few cases) as imbeciles.”
Can you, your friends, and your loved ones all pass the 1,3,4,2,3,1 test required for admission to the United States?
* Not to be confused with the Mr. Knox best known as the perpetually tongue-tied straight man to Theodor Geisel’s famous fox.