Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Polish, Irish, Australian, Yiddish & More

in Comedy, Film, Television, Theatre | March 18th, 2015

Meryl Streep, fre­quent­ly hailed as one of our Great­est Liv­ing Actress­es — she claims there’s no such thing — com­mands a near-ency­clo­pe­dic mas­tery of accents.

Oth­ers may pre­pare for their roles by work­ing with a dialect coach or lis­ten­ing to tapes of native speak­ers, but Streep push­es to the lim­it, as indi­cat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion with author Andre Dubus III, below.

She not only learned Pol­ish in order to play a trou­bled Holo­caust sur­vivor in Sophie’s Choice, she thought deeply about the way gen­der roles and peri­od inform vocal pre­sen­ta­tion.

Clear­ly a lot of effort goes into the per­for­mances that leave British crit­ics cheer­ing Streep as she sails above play­ing fields lit­tered with Amer­i­can actors who dared attempt Eng­lish accents.

Her com­mit­ment to her craft is inad­ver­tent­ly to blame for pop­u­lar­iz­ing the phrase “dingo’s got my baby.”

How refresh­ing that this ver­sa­tile and accom­plished actor is not pre­cious about her skills. She game­ly trot­ted them out for the come­di­an Ellen DeGeneres’ par­lor game, above. Looks like fun, pro­vid­ed one’s not an intro­vert. Each play­er draws a card labelled with an accent, sticks it to the brim of a sil­ly hat, then tried to guess the accent, based on her partner’s impromp­tu per­for­mance.

“Brook­lyn?” Streep gig­gles when the Louisiana-born DeGeneres has a go at Boston.

Her stab at the Bronx shows off her improv chops far bet­ter than the most recent stunt DeGeneres roped her into.

(For what it’s worth, Ben Affleck also excelled at this game. The late Robin Williams was less con­vinc­ing, but char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly irre­press­ible, even when called upon to imper­son­ate speak­ers of oth­er races.)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and low bud­get the­ater impre­sario. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Watch an Animated Buckminster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geodesic Life”

in Animation, Architecture | March 18th, 2015

Will human­i­ty ever pro­duce anoth­er mind quite like Buck­min­ster Fuller’s? It does­n’t seem to have done so thus far. Even in Fuller’s own time, peo­ple could­n’t quite believe the intel­lec­tu­al idio­syn­crasy of the inven­tor who came up with the geo­des­ic dome, the Dymax­ion Car, and much, much more. “Time and again,” he once said, “I am asked, ‘who else do you know who thinks the way you do, or does what you do?’ I find it very strange to have to answer, ‘I don’t know any­body else.’ It’s not because I think of myself as unique, but sim­ply because I did choose a very dif­fer­ent grand strat­e­gy.”

Fuller — or Bucky, his pre­ferred nick­name — says more about that grand strat­e­gy and the expe­ri­ences that led him to devel­op it in the inter­views, con­duct­ed by Studs Terkel in 1965 and 1970, from which that quote comes. You can hear it in the video above, which brings the mate­r­i­al to life by visu­al­iz­ing the ele­ments of Fuller’s life and ideas through the hand of ani­ma­tor Jen­nifer Yoo. The video recent­ly debuted as part of The Exper­i­menters, a three-episode series meant to ani­mate the words of thinkers like Fuller, Jane Goodall, and Richard Feyn­man, con­cen­trat­ing on “the inspi­ra­tions from each of their per­son­al lives that helped influ­ence their careers and earth-chang­ing dis­cov­er­ies.”

Fuller enthu­si­asts have always insist­ed that his ideas have only grown more rel­e­vant with time, but now that the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry has found us rethink­ing the way we live — how we do it and how we make spaces to do it in being per­haps Fuller’s most abid­ing obses­sion — his engage­ment with the con­cept of “con­tin­u­al­ly doing more with less” real­ly does sound smarter than ever. If you enjoy the patch of Buck­y’s uni­verse The Exper­i­menters expos­es, con­sid­er chas­ing these four min­utes of “Buck­min­ster Fuller on the Geo­des­ic Life” with 42 hours of his video lec­ture series Every­thing I Know. The man did­n’t just think dif­fer­ent­ly from the rest of us, after all — he also thought a lot more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Classical Music Composed by Friedrich Nietzsche: 43 Original Tracks

in Music, Philosophy | March 17th, 2015

Nietzsche

A philoso­pher per­haps more wide­ly known for his prodi­gious mus­tache than for the vari­eties of his thought, Friedrich Niet­zsche often seems to be mis­read more than read. Even some­one like Michel Fou­cault could gloss over a cru­cial fact about Nietzsche’s body of work: Fou­cault remarked in an unpub­lished inter­view that Nietzsche’s “won­der­ful ideas” were “used by the Nazi Par­ty.” But that use, he neglect­ed to men­tion, came about through a scheme hatched by Nietzsche’s sis­ter, after his men­tal col­lapse and death, to edit, change, and oth­er­wise manip­u­late the thinker’s work in a way The Tele­graph deemed “crim­i­nal.” Fou­cault may not have known the full con­text, but Niet­zsche had about as much sym­pa­thy for fas­cism as he did for Christianity–both rea­sons for his break with com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er.

What Niet­zsche loved most was music. Even in the wake of this scan­dal, with Niet­zsche ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed at the schol­ar­ly lev­el at least, the philoso­pher is gen­er­al­ly read piece­meal, used to prop up some ide­ol­o­gy or crit­i­cal the­o­ry or anoth­er, a ten­den­cy his anti-sys­tem­at­ic, apho­ris­tic work inspires. A more holis­tic approach yields two impor­tant gen­er­al obser­va­tions: Niet­zsche found the mun­dane work of pol­i­tics and nation­al­ist con­quest, with its trib­al­ism and moral pre­ten­sions, thor­ough­ly dis­taste­ful. Instead, he con­sid­ered the cre­ative work of artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians, as well as sci­en­tists, of para­mount impor­tance.

Niet­zsche almost entered med­i­cine and was him­self an artist: “before he engaged him­self ful­ly as a philoso­pher, he had already cre­at­ed a sub­stan­tial out­put as poet and com­pos­er,” writes Albany Records. In an 1887 let­ter writ­ten three years before his death, Niet­zsche claimed, “There has nev­er been a philoso­pher who has been in essence a musi­cian to such an extent as I am,” though he also admit­ted he “might be a thor­ough­ly unsuc­cess­ful musi­cian.” In any case, he hoped that at least some of his com­po­si­tions would become known and heard as com­ple­men­tary to his philo­soph­i­cal project.

Now seri­ous read­ers of Niet­zsche, or those sim­ply curi­ous about his musi­cian­ship, can hear most of those com­po­si­tions in a Spo­ti­fy playlist above. Per­formed by Cana­di­an musi­cians Lau­ret­ta Alt­man, Wolf­gang Bot­ten­berg, and the Mon­tre­al Orpheus Singers, the music ranges from spright­ly to pen­sive, roman­tic to mourn­ful, and some of it seems to come right out of the Protes­tant hym­nals he grew up with as the son of a Luther­an min­is­ter. Niet­zsche com­posed music through­out his life—a com­plete chronol­o­gy spans the years 1854, when he was only ten, to 1887. See The Niet­zsche Chan­nel for a thor­ough list of pub­lished Niet­zsche record­ings and sheet music. To lis­ten to the music here, you will need to down­load and reg­is­ter for Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

A Free Playlist of Music From The Works Of James Joyce (Plus Songs Inspired by the Mod­ernist Author)

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Animated Marc Maron Recalls Interviewing a Shirtless Iggy Pop in LA Garage

in Music, Podcasts | March 17th, 2015

Marc Maron’s WTF pod­cast now clocks in at 585 episodes. Cer­tain­ly one I remem­ber — and so does Maron too — is Episode 400, which fea­tured the god­fa­ther of punk, Iggy Pop. Above, an ani­mat­ed Marc Maron recalls the many musi­cians he’s inter­viewed in his Los Ange­les garage. And espe­cial­ly the sum­mer day when Pop paid a vis­it, tore off his shirt, and gave his own nip­ple a lit­tle twist. Good times in LA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

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Elementary School Students Perform in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

in Film | March 17th, 2015

david lynch school play

Image by Janet McMil­lan appeared in The Mil­wau­kee Record

For those of us with kids, the grade school play is usu­al­ly a com­bi­na­tion of parental pride and teeth-grat­ing nos­tal­gic civic les­son and/or Bible study. Not so at Mil­wau­kee, WI’s High­land Com­mu­ni­ty School where super cool dra­ma teacher Bar­ry Weber has writ­ten and pro­duced Judy Plays with Fire, a love let­ter to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks and oth­er Lyn­chophil­ia.

The play has all the hall­marks of the director–red cur­tains, strobe lights, smoke machines, a Badala­men­ti-esque score–along with a back­wards-speak­ing char­ac­ter in a red suit, two earnest and upstand­ing detec­tives, lum­ber­jacks, rab­bits, mys­te­ri­ous peo­ple in white masks, a Log Lady-like char­ac­ter who talks to a Slinky, and a mid­dle Amer­i­ca town called “Cen­ter­ville” that, like Lau­ra Palmer, is “full of secrets.” One char­ac­ter mimes Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Under­stood” into a LED wand–shades of Dean Stock­well in Blue Vel­vet. Char­ac­ter names like Mr. Frost and the MacLach­lans nod to the cre­ators and actors behind Twin Peaks. The entire cast is played by 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and apart from Mr. Weber, the pro­duc­tion is crewed by High­land stu­dents as well.

This isn’t Weber’s first go at push­ing the bound­aries of school the­ater. His stu­dent the­ater group put on 2014’s ZERO, a cyber­punk tale, and a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic zom­bie pro­duc­tion in 2010 called Pen­guin Attack.
The pro­duc­tion got the atten­tion of the Mil­wau­kee Record who sent reporter Matt Wild out to see the three per­for­mance run that fin­ished last Fri­day. He even gave it a bit of a Vari­ety-style review, say­ing that

“In the case of Judy, (Maeve) Haley is ter­rif­ic as the inquis­i­tive Coop­er sur­ro­gate, though diminu­tive CJ Young steals the show as the schem­ing Mr. Frost. Whether he’s bark­ing orders to his flunkies or lord­ing over his ani­ma­tron­ic house band, Young—who had to take time off from act­ing two years ago due to con­flicts with bas­ket­ball practice—imbues his char­ac­ter with a sur­pris­ing amount of grav­i­tas and men­ace.”

Matt Wild also talked to Weber, who spoke of his desire to give kids more chal­leng­ing works.

“I want to make sure that when I write the scripts there are no ‘trees,’” Weber says, ref­er­enc­ing grade school plays that often give stu­dents thank­less roles as inan­i­mate objects. “I want to write the kind of plays that as a kid I would have real­ly want­ed to do. I cer­tain­ly didn’t know who David Lynch was when I was a kid, but I’m sure I would have real­ly enjoyed it.”

No video has sur­faced yet to match the intrigu­ing pro­duc­tion stills, but we’re on the look­out. In the mean­time, how well do you know Judy?

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent

David Lynch Falls in Love: A Clas­sic Scene From Twin Peaks

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

Watch David Lynch’s Hotel Room: The Com­plete Minis­eries Fea­tur­ing Har­ry Dean Stan­ton, Grif­fin Dunne, and Crispin Glover (1993)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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Philip K. Dick Makes Off-the-Wall Predictions for the Future: Mars Colonies, Alien Viruses & More (1981)

in Sci Fi | March 17th, 2015

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Philip K. Dick died in 1982, but read­ers — more read­ers than ever, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty — still thrill to his dar­ing, uncon­ven­tion­al imag­i­na­tion, and how tight­ly he could weave the inven­tions of that imag­i­na­tion into mun­dane real­i­ty. (Some­times they won­der, as in his meet­ing with God, to what extent he him­self could tell the two apart.) And like many strong-visioned writ­ers of what rough­ly fell into the cat­e­go­ry of sci­ence fic­tion, Dick got con­sult­ed now and again as some­thing of a futur­ist.

In 1980, David Wal­lechin­sky, Amy Wal­lace, and Irv­ing Wal­lace (the Book of Lists peo­ple) round­ed up visions of the future from all man­ner of sages past and present, pre­scient and incom­pe­tent, in order to cre­ate The Book of Pre­dic­tions. Dick­’s con­tri­bu­tions, repub­lished in the Sep­tem­ber 2003 issue of fanzine PKD Otaku, go like this.

  • 1983: The Sovi­et Union will devel­op an oper­a­tional par­ti­cle-beam accel­er­a­tor, mak­ing mis­sile attack against that coun­try impos­si­ble. At the same time the U.S.S.R. will deploy this weapon as a satel­lite killer. The U.S. will turn, then, to nerve gas.
  • 1984: The U.S. will per­fect a sys­tem by which hydro­gen, stored in met­al hydrides, will serve as a fuel source, elim­i­nat­ing a need for oil.
  • 1985: By or before this date there will be a titan­ic nuclear acci­dent either in the U.S.S.R. or in the U.S., result­ing in shut­ting down all nuclear pow­er plants.
  • 1986: Such satel­lites as HEAO‑2 will uncov­er vast, unsus­pect­ed high ener­gy phe­nom­e­non in the uni­verse, indi­cat­ing that there is suf­fi­cient mass to col­lapse the uni­verse back when it has reached its expan­sion lim­it.
  • 1989: The U.S. and the Sovi­et Union will agree to set up one vast meta­com­put­er as a cen­tral source for infor­ma­tion avail­able to the entire world; this will be essen­tial due to the huge amount of infor­ma­tion com­ing into exis­tence.
  • 1993: An arti­fi­cial life form will be cre­at­ed in a lab, prob­a­bly in the U.S.S.R., thus reduc­ing our inter­est in locat­ing life forms on oth­er plan­ets.
  • 1995: Com­put­er use by ordi­nary cit­i­zens (already avail­able in 1980) will trans­form the pub­lic from pas­sive view­ers of TV into men­tal­ly alert, high­ly trained, infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing experts.
  • 1997: The first closed-dome colonies will be suc­cess­ful­ly estab­lished on Luna and Mars. Through DNA mod­i­fi­ca­tion, qua­si-mutant humans will be cre­at­ed who can sur­vive under non-Ter­ran con­di­tions, i.e., alien envi­ron­ments.
  • 1998: The Sovi­et Union will test a propul­sion dri­ve that moves a star­ship at the veloc­i­ty of light; a pilot ship will set out for Prox­i­ma Cen­tau­rus, soon to be fol­lowed by an Amer­i­can ship.
  • 2000: An alien virus, brought back by an inter­plan­e­tary ship, will dec­i­mate the pop­u­la­tion of Earth, but leave the colonies on Luna and Mars intact.
  • 2012: Using tachyons (par­ti­cles that move back­ward in time) as a car­ri­er, the Sovi­et Union will attempt to alter the past with sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion.

Cher­ry-pick­ers among us will fix­ate on Dick­’s near-hits: the devel­op­ment of DNA mod­i­fi­ca­tion, a 1985 nuclear acci­dent in the U.S.S.R. (Cher­nobyl hap­pened in 1986), and com­put­er use by ordi­nary cit­i­zens (though our sta­tus as “men­tal­ly alert, high­ly trained, infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing experts” admit­ted­ly remains ques­tion­able). Oth­ers might pre­fer to high­light the most improb­a­ble, such as the elim­i­nat­ed need for oil, the cre­ation of arti­fi­cial life, and not just the 21st-cen­tu­ry exis­tence but even­tu­al time-trav­el­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the Sovi­et Union.

Still, even in his fic­tion, Dick does have his moments of prophe­cy, espe­cial­ly for those who share his para­noia that we’ve unwit­ting­ly let our­selves slip into sur­veil­lance-state con­di­tions. But I’ve always found him best, espe­cial­ly in the what-if-Japan-won-the-war sto­ry The Man in the High Cas­tle, as a teller of alter­nate his­to­ries, whether of the past, present, or future. These pre­dic­tions, stretch­ing from just after the writer’s death to just before our time, strike me as noth­ing so much as the premis­es for the best nov­el Philip K. Dick nev­er wrote.

You can find 33 of his sto­ries online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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1933 Article on Frida Kahlo: “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art”

in Art | March 16th, 2015

Kahlo One

Wal­ter Keane—supposed painter of “Big Eyed Chil­dren” and sub­ject of a recent Tim Bur­ton film—made a killing, attain­ing almost Thomas Kinkade-like sta­tus in the mid­dle­brow art mar­ket of the 1950s and 60s. As it turns out, his wife, Mar­garet was in fact the artist, “paint­ing 16 hours a day,” accord­ing to a Guardian pro­file. In some part, the sto­ry may illus­trate how easy it was for a man like Wal­ter to get mil­lions of peo­ple to see what they want­ed to see in the pic­ture of success—a charis­mat­ic, tal­ent­ed man in front, his qui­et, duti­ful wife behind. Bur­ton may not have tak­en too much license with the com­mon­place atti­tudes of the day when he has Christoph Waltz’s Wal­ter Keane tell Mar­garet, “Sad­ly, peo­ple don’t buy lady art.”

And yet, far from the Keane’s San Fran­cis­co, and per­haps as far as a per­son can get from Margaret’s frus­trat­ed acqui­es­cence, we have Fri­da Kahlo cre­at­ing a body of work that would even­tu­al­ly over­shad­ow her husband’s, mural­ist Diego Rivera. Unlike Wal­ter Keane, Rivera was a very good painter who did not attempt to over­shad­ow his wife. Instead of pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy, he had plen­ty of the per­son­al vari­ety. Even so, Rivera encour­aged Kahlo’s career and rec­og­nized her for­mi­da­ble tal­ent, and she, in turn, sup­port­ed him. In 1933, when Flo­rence Davies—whom Kahlo biog­ra­ph­er Ger­ry Souter describes as “a local news hen”—caught up with her in Detroit, Kahlo “played the cheeky, but ador­ing wife” of Diego while he labored to fin­ish his famous Detroit mur­al project.

That may be so, but she did not do so at her own expense. Quite the con­trary. Asked if Diego taught her to paint, she replies, “’No, I didn’t study with Diego. I didn’t study with any­one. I just start­ed to paint.’” At which point, writes Davies, “her eyes begin to twin­kle” as she goes on to say, “’Of course, he does pret­ty well for a lit­tle boy, but it is I who am the big artist.’” Davies prais­es Kahlo’s style as “skill­ful and beau­ti­ful” and the artist her­self as “a minia­ture-like lit­tle per­son with her long black braids wound demure­ly about her head and a fool­ish lit­tle ruf­fled apron over her black silk dress.” And yet, despite Kahlo’s con­fi­dence and seri­ous intent, rep­re­sent­ed by a promi­nent pho­to of her at seri­ous work, Davies—or more like­ly her editor—decided to title the arti­cle, “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art,” a move that reminds me of Wal­ter Keane’s patron­iz­ing atti­tude.

Kahlo Two

The belit­tling head­line is quaint and dis­heart­en­ing, speak­ing to us, like the unearthed 1938 let­ter from Dis­ney to an aspir­ing female ani­ma­tor, of the cru­el­ty of casu­al sex­ism. Davies appar­ent­ly filed anoth­er arti­cle on Rivera the year pri­or. This time the head­line doesn’t men­tion Fri­da, though her fierce unflinch­ing gaze, not Rivera’s wrestler’s mug, again adorns the spread. One sen­tence in the arti­cle says it all: “Fre­da [sic], it must be under­stood, is Seno­ra Rivera, who came very near to steal­ing the show.” Davies then goes on to again describe Kahlo’s appear­ance, not­ing of her work only that “she does paint with great charm.” Six years lat­er, Kahlo would indeed steal the show at her first and only solo show in the Unit­ed States, then again in Paris, where sur­re­al­ist mae­stro Andre Bre­ton cham­pi­oned her work and the Lou­vre bought a paint­ing, its first by a twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Mex­i­can artist.

And Mar­garet Keane? She even­tu­al­ly sued Wal­ter and now reaps her own rewards. You can buy one of her paint­ings here.

via @rabihalameddine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fri­da Kahlo Writes a Per­son­al Let­ter to Geor­gia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Ner­vous Break­down (1933)

Pho­tos of a Very Young Fri­da Kahlo, Tak­en by Her Dad

A Quick Ani­ma­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Famous Self Por­trait

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Take the 146-Question Knowledge Test Thomas Edison Gave to Prospective Employees (1921)

in History, Science | March 16th, 2015

640px-Thomas_Edison2

I remem­ber open­ing my col­lege news­pa­per one day, and out of it fell what looked like an adver­tis­ing sup­ple­ment of unusu­al­ly util­i­tar­i­an design. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, it con­tained a series of math‑y look­ing prob­lems for the read­er to work out and, if they did so, mail in to an address pro­vid­ed. Word soon began to cir­cu­late that this unusu­al leaflet came from no less an insti­tu­tion than Google itself, already well known as a provider of advanced search ser­vices but not quite yet as a benev­o­lent provider of dream jobs (an image now sat­i­rized in movies like The Intern­ship).

The unusu­al hir­ing prac­tices of giant, inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have become the stuff of mod­ern myth, but the usage of seem­ing­ly job-unre­lat­ed intel­lec­tu­al tests as a fil­ter for poten­tial employ­ees has a much longer his­to­ry. Thomas Edi­son, that orig­i­nal giant of Amer­i­can tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, put for­ward the first famous exam­ple: a 146-ques­tion test on sub­jects of gen­er­al knowl­edge from geog­ra­phy to his­to­ry to physics to the price of gold.

“Amer­i­cans obsessed over the test fol­low­ing [the] pub­li­ca­tion of many ques­tions in the May 11, 1921 New York Times,” writes Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak. “From there the test was debat­ed, copied, and par­o­died in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines around the coun­try.” If you’d like to get a sense of how you’d have fared in the scram­ble for a sweet Edi­son job, set your mind back to the ear­ly 1920s and tack­le these ques­tions as best you can:

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. How is leather tanned?

55. What is arti­fi­cial silk made from?

56. What is a cais­son?

57. What is shel­lac?

58. What is cel­lu­loid made from?

59. What caus­es the tides?

60. To what is the change of the sea­sons due?

61. What is coke?

62. From what part of the North Atlantic do we get cod­fish?

63. Who reached the South Pole?

64. What is a mon­soon?

65. Where is the Mag­dale­na Bay?

66. From where do we import figs?

67. From where do we get dates?

68. Where do we get our domes­tic sar­dines?

69. What is the longest rail­road in the world?

70. Where is Kenosha?

71. What is the speed of sound?

72. What is the speed of light?

73. Who was Cleopa­tra and how did she die?

74. Where are con­dors found?

75, Who dis­cov­ered the law of grav­i­ta­tion?

76. What is the dis­tance between the earth and sun?

77. Who invent­ed pho­tog­ra­phy?

78. What coun­try pro­duces the most wool?

79. What is felt?

80. What cere­al is used in all parts of the world?

81. What states pro­duce phos­phates?

82. Why is cast iron called pig iron?

83. Name three prin­ci­pal acids?

84. Name three pow­er­ful poi­sons.

85. Who dis­cov­ered radi­um?

86. Who dis­cov­ered the X‑ray?

87. Name three prin­ci­pal alka­lis.

88. What part of Ger­many do toys come from?

89. What States bound West Vir­ginia?

90. Where do we get peanuts from?

91. What is the cap­i­tal of Alaba­ma?

92. Who com­posed “Il Trova­tore”?

93. What is the weight of air in a room 20 by 30 by 10?

94. Where is plat­inum found?

95. With what met­al is plat­inum asso­ci­at­ed when found?

96. How is sul­phuric acid made?

97. Where do we get sul­phur from?

98. Who dis­cov­ered how to vul­can­ize rub­ber?

99. Where do we import rub­ber from?

100. What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?

101. Who invent­ed the cot­ton gin?

102. What is the price of 12 grains of gold?

103. What is the dif­fer­ence between anthracite and bitu­mi­nous coal?

104. Where do we get ben­zol from?

105. Of what is glass made?

106. How is win­dow glass made?

107. What is porce­lain?

108. What coun­try makes the best opti­cal lens­es and what city?

109. What kind of a machine is used to cut the facets of dia­monds?

110. What is a foot pound?

111. Where do we get borax from?

112. Where is the Assuan Dam?

113. What star is it that has been recent­ly mea­sured and found to be of enor­mous size?

114. What large riv­er in the Unit­ed States flows from south to north?

115. What are the Straits of Messi­na?

116. What is the high­est moun­tain in the world?

117. Where do we import cork from?

118. Where is the St. Gothard tun­nel?

119. What is the Taj Mahal?

120. Where is Labrador?

121. Who wrote “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”?

122. Who wrote “Home, Sweet Home”?

123. Who was Mar­tin Luther?

124. What is the chief acid in vine­gar?

125. Who wrote “Don Quixote”?

126. Who wrote “Les Mis­er­ables”?

127. What place is the great­est dis­tance below sea lev­el?

128. What are axe han­dles made of?

129. Who made “The Thinker”?

130. Why is a Fahren­heit ther­mome­ter called Fahren­heit?

131. Who owned and ran the New York Her­ald for a long time?

132. What is copra?

133. What insect car­ries malar­ia?

134. Who dis­cov­ered the Pacif­ic Ocean?

135. What coun­try has the largest out­put of nick­el in the world?

136. What ingre­di­ents are in the best white paint?

137. What is glu­cose and how made?

138. In what part of the world does it nev­er rain?

139. What was the approx­i­mate pop­u­la­tion of Eng­land, France, Ger­many and Rus­sia before the war?

140. Where is the city of Mec­ca?

141. Where do we get quick­sil­ver from?

142. Of what are vio­lin strings made?

143. What city on the Atlantic seaboard is the great­est pot­tery cen­tre?

144. Who is called the “father of rail­roads” in the Unit­ed States?

145. What is the heav­i­est kind of wood?

146. What is the light­est wood?

Some of these ques­tions, like those on the loca­tion of Copen­hagen or the iden­ti­ty of Leonidas (you need think back only to 300), have grown eas­i­er with time. Some — “What is coke?” “What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?” — have grown hard­er. Oth­ers will require you to call upon not cur­rent knowl­edge, but peri­od knowl­edge: sure, you know the num­ber of states in the union now, but how about in 1921? And sure, you know which city is the fur cen­ter of the Unit­ed States now, but how about in 1921?

Once you’ve made your guess­es, you can check your answers over at Pale­o­fu­ture. Edis­on’s test will almost cer­tain­ly frus­trate you — and if it does­n’t, you may have a career wait­ing not at Google, but on Jeop­ardy! — and it may even fill you with grat­i­tude that we live in an age where hot employ­ers check for raw brain­pow­er, not the abil­i­ty to mem­o­rize a seem­ing­ly ran­dom assort­ment of facts. But the test itself, like sev­er­al of its ques­tions, pulls a bit of a trick. The tremen­dous amount of atten­tion it received when the pub­lic caught a glimpse of it reveals Edis­on’s mas­tery of the high­est Amer­i­can force: pub­lic­i­ty.

Note: Thanks to one of our read­ers, you can see how Edi­son defend­ed the test in the pages of The New York Times.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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