The US Army Apha Test was developed firstly by Roger Thomas Lennon in 1917 as an intelligence measure for assessing US army recruits.
Arthur Sinton Otis developed it further to improve cost and time efficiency as compared to one developed by Alfred Binet (1857–1911), which was individually administered. Given in multiple-choice format and administered in groups, 1.7 million World War I recruits took the Army Alpha test. The results were published in 1921 and included the relative performance of recruits of different national origins.
The Army Beta was a version of the test developed for use with those who were illiterate.