When it comes to IQ tests, there is a strong conflict of interests regarding their origin. Some people say that the Intelligence Quotient tests were first designed by a French psychologist – Alfred Binet. Others say that it was some popular German artist who laid foundations of the initial IQ tests. Whatever the reason may be the interest level in IQ tests dates back to hundreds of years.

As far as Alfred Binet was concerned, he was assigned by the government to assess the mental caliber of potential recruits for the military. His tests were very basic and not like the ones that we currently take. However, Binet’s modeling and scoring criterion was more than enough to get things going at that time. After all, the guy was a psychologist, one of the best of his kinds.

Besides, in 1900s, the French government was quite strict concerning youth proficiency in academics. The government passed several laws, making it mandatory for all students to go to school and help students improve in their said study area. Back then, Binet not only monitored the military recruitment exercises, but he also paid attention to the contents of academic syllabus that was being taught at school level.

Binet’s first test was known as, “Binet – Simon Scale”. Even at that time, Binet had a knack for accepting intelligence as a wide and untamable beast. He admitted that the tests were not enough to fully assess an individual’s intelligence capabilities. That’s why there are so many of those tests out there, these days. Each one is designed to analyze different mental capacities of a human brain. 

-          Binet’s Stanford Intelligence Test

Seeing to the immense success and popularity of the Simon Scale test, Binet moved on to design the Stanford Binet Intelligence Test. It was his first test, the one and only that was adapted by the U.S. researchers on a wide scale. This test used a single number, which was titled as – the Intelligence Quotient Number. This number represented a person’s ratings on the said test. The score was derived according to a simple formula – Test taker’s mental age was divided by his or her chronological age. The new number was then multiplied by 100, to tout out the final test score figure.

-          World War I – New Stance on IQ Tests

As soon as the World War I broke out, there was a stupendous amount of potential candidates. Yeah, the armed forces did need a good number of recruits, but they were not willing to compromise on quality. That’s why, Robert Yerkes, the President of the APA and the Chairman of the Committee of Psychological Examination of Recruits, developed two tests. He titled them as ;

• Army Alpha Test
• Army Beta Test

Over 2 million soldiers were made to take these tests before a final approval for suitable positions in the army. The process worked like a charm, with ineligible candidates filtered out during the first screening phases of the test.