That machine, which Pressey exhibited at the 1924 APA meeting, administered a multiple-choice choice test: “What does perjury mean?” read one question. The possible answers: “(1) Lying (2) Swearing (3) Slander (4) Gossip.”10 The test was fed into the machine on a sheet of paper just as one would load a piece of paper into a typewriter.
The test taker had four keys with which to respond, and after selecting her answer, the machine would advance automatically to the next question, calculating the number of correct responses along the way. Alternately, a lever in the back could change its operation slightly, and the machine would not move on to the next question until the test taker got it right, tabulating the number of tries on each question.
Pressey filed the paperwork for his first patent, the “machine for intelligent tests,” in June 1928. (The patent was not awarded until March 1930.)
— 📖 Teaching Machines — The History of Personalized Learning