In 1925, seven students went 60 hours without sleep—for science
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday.The grueling Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, was first devised in the 1920s by George Washington University professor Frederick August Moss. Originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test for Medical Students, Moss developed the readiness test as a way to curb high dropout rates in medical schools. The MCAT paved the way for other standardized admission exams, like the SAT, and the many sleepless nights college-bound students still endure in preparation. But Moss likely wouldn’t have minded that sleepless legacy: To Moss, a psychology professor at GWU, sleep was a useless habit.
In November 1925, Popular Science writer Newton Burke described an experiment Moss conceived of to assess whether sleep was a “tragic waste of a third of the precious hours of...
