Test-your-iq | The birth of IQ

In the early 1900s, the French government asked Alfred Binet to help them decide which pupils were most likely to have difficulties at school. The government adopted laws requiring all French children to be educated, so it was important to find a way to identify those children who would need special help with their education. That is how the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, was born.

This first intelligence test, today called the Binet-Simon scale, became the basis for the intelligence tests still in use today. However, Binet himself did not entirely believe that his psychometric tools could be used to measure a single, permanent and innate intelligence.

In recent years, the Wechsler scales have been the most frequently used tools in the field of psychology to measure intelligence. The developer of these tests, Wechsler, published his first scale in the 1930s. He used material from the Binet Alpha and Beta tests to create his own test. An important characteristic of his test was that age was taken into account for the calculation of the IQ. Due to this feature, the IQ remains "constant".