Despite a painful familiarity with filling out Scantron forms, I’ve never seen the machine they were fed into. This video shows how they work, how the answers were programmed, and dives into its internals.
If you just want to see the guts of it, skip to about 14:30
We had too many students for the lunch room, so we split one class into four, so kids could shuffle in and out.
For me this was physics, which I went to several times before realizing I could just hang out in the break room and skip class.
One day, I felt some sort of pang and decided to go do the right thing and go to class. Well it was test day and the teacher had done the old run your own when you’re done. The error clicks were very obvious. That always irritated me.
When I walked in. I heard giggles and absolutely did not recognize anyone lol. The teacher looked quite bemused. Anyway I grab my test and Scantron pop through the test and finish only to see I’m the first.
Weird.
So, I wait until a couple have gone just to make sure I didn’t miss something, then I stand up, take the walk of shame and two clicks. I did better on that test than most of the class.
Anyway, I fucking hated Scantron.