Word: edisons
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...monarch in his way, Inventor Thomas Alva Edison can also indulge his propensity for asking trick questions, rewarding him who gives the wisest answers. Nine years ago he compiled for his prospective employes a list of puzzlers which provided table talk in U. S. homes for weeks afterward. Last year he gathered 49 handpicked boys just graduated from their high schools, offered a prize of expenses and tuition to any college for four years to the one who did best in an examination he submitted to them (TIME, Aug. 12, 1929). Last week 49 more boys journeyed to West Orange...
...days of fun preceded the test. The boys were shown through the Edison laboratories, shook hands with Henry Ford, Harvey Samuel Firestone, Lewis Perry (principal of Phillips Exeter Academy), Hubert S. Howe (Columbia neurologist), William Lowe Bryan (President of Indiana University). During this ceremony each boy was permitted to step up to a microphone and speak his name and State. There was a banquet at which they formally met last year's winner, Wilber Brotherton Huston of Olympia, Wash., M. I. T. sophomore. There was also a dance to which the Edisons invited 52 of New Jersey...
...days later the "extremely bright boys" filed into a room in the Edison plant, sat down at broad desks, began frowning and screwing up their mouths over the questionnaires. Sophomore Huston looked over the test, appraised it as no harder than last year's, promised to try his hand at it later, settled down to read a tabloid newspaper...
...Edison's own answer was: "The guides must be saved and it is not essential that the leader die." Only one of the boys decided to save himself. He was Robert H. Smith of Las Vegas, N. Mex,. who said: "I live in the desert country and I know what it's like. It's all right to have theories about who you'd save, but I know what people actually do when they get into a situation on the desert. They save themselves...
...Edison representatives thwarted efforts by the press to find the full answer to the desert question, or any other question, given by the winner-freckle-faced, pompadoured Arthur Olney Williams, Jr., 17, of East Providence, R. I. As soon as his victory was announced his 48 competitors lifted him on their shoulders, cheered "One, two-good luck to you, Williams!" Winner Williams announced that he would go to M. I. T. If he had not won the scholarship, he said, he would have worked his way through his hometown institution, Brown. His father is chief clerk in the Provident...