RARE "Aptitude Testing " Johnson O'Connor Hand Signed 3X5 Card For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "Aptitude Testing" Johnson O'Connor Hand Signed 3X5 Card. 

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 Johnson O'Connor (January

22, 1891 – July 1, 1973) was an American psychometrician, researcher, and educator. He is

most remembered as a pioneer in the study of aptitude testing and as an advocate for the importance

of vocabulary. O’Connor came from a prosperous and

well-rooted Chicago family. His

parents were John O’Connor and Nelie Johnson O’Connor. O'Connor's mother

descended from ancestors who were among the first Puritan settlers of Massachusetts, while his father was an attorney who at one

time shared an office with the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow. O'Connor received a progressive primary and

secondary education with John Dewey at Dewey's famous University of

Chicago Laboratory School. He was graduated from Harvard University in

1913 with a degree in Philosophy. After graduation he conducted research in

astronomical mathematics under famed astronomer Percival Lowell, brother of the poet Amy Lowell and worked in electrical engineering at American Steel and Wire and General Electric.

In

a visionary[experiment, the General Electric leadership

decided that if employees could be matched to positions that best suited their

natural abilities and retrained in those areas, it would benefit both company

and employees. In 1922 F.P. Cox of GE asked O’Connor to develop an in-house

program called the "human" engineering project that would find the

proper positioning for each employee and retrain them within that field. This

led O’Connor into a study of inborn aptitudes and to the development of

aptitude tests that he called "work samples." Using empirical

research, O'Connor developed classifications for specific human abilities, to

which he gave labels such as "Graphoria," "Ideaphoria," and

"Structural Visualization."  O’Connor

became one of the first researchers to offer documentation that aptitudes are

in fact innate. For example, one who is mathematically inclined can learn much

more quickly and easily about mathematics than can one whose aptitudes in this

area are low. Similarly, if one were to take two groups, one that possessed a

high aptitude for finger dexterity and one that did not, with practice, both

groups performance would improve, but the group that possessed the higher

aptitude would continue to outperform the other despite identical training. O'Connor

sought to expand his efforts in researching human aptitudes and in 1930 he

founded the Human Engineering Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology This organization evolved into the

Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, a non-profit organization with branches

in several major U.S. cities. In

addition to gathering data on skills specific to various vocations, O’Connor

also gathered various general data on his subjects. After establishing the link

between specific aptitudes and performance in certain positions, O’Connor

decided to take a second look at his data and see if there were any aptitudes

which were more important than others in determining general success and

advancement. It was during the course of this testing that O’Connor stumbled

upon an unexpected discovery: A person’s vocabulary level was the best single

measure for predicting occupational success in every area. Furthermore,

vocabulary is not innate, and can be acquired by everybody. Because acquisition

of vocabulary was not, in O'Connor's view, determined by innate aptitudes, it

became a major focus of his later writings. O'Connor considered vocabulary

augmentation a major key to unlocking human potential. His later research

included an effort to catalogue the most important words for English-speaking

people to know and to order these words by difficulty. O’Connor used his

findings to improve vocabulary in American students. By first isolating a

student’s vocabulary level through a carefully researched multiple choice

diagnostic test, O' Connor believed that students could enter a vocabulary

program of study that matches their skill level. It is at this level, and just

beyond, where learning is most efficient. Some educators have attempted to create

a vocabulary-building curriculum based on O'Connor's research, such acquisition software. O'Connor himself dedicated several

books to the topic of learning vocabulary including: "The Johnson O'Connor

English Vocabulary Builder" and "The Johnson O'Connor Science

Vocabulary Builder" as well as the "Ginn Vocabulary Building

Program" which he co-authored. His own extensive vocabulary served him

well when he was a guest on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life television

program. Groucho joked about his guest having two last names. The final years

of O'Connor's life were spent researching, lecturing, and writing about human

aptitudes and ways for people to maximize their mental potential. On these

subjects he authored numerous books, including "The Unique Individual", also devoted much of his later

research to studying vocabulary and the processes by which people acquired word

knowledge. O'Connor died in Mexico City, D.F., in July 1973 and is buried

beside his wife, the architect Eleanor Manning O'Connor,

in Newport Beach, California.

He was survived by his engineer son, Chadwell O'Connor,

an Academy Award winner who designed the

O'Connor Fluid-Head camera tripod.