McAllister says the results concluded that “his brain had been catnapping the entire time… parts of it would be asleep parts of it would be awake.”įor him it makes sense in the context of human evolution.
Randy’s results from the hospital were sent off to Arizona to be studied. If he closed his eyes he would be immediately asleep.” Night time was harder as there was nothing to do and they had a terrible time keeping him awake.Īs all this was happening, attention from the media began to gain momentum and for a brief time the boys’ experiment became the third most written-about story in the American national press – after the assassination of John F Kennedy and a visit by The Beatles. “So we could always get him going by playing basketball or going bowling, things like that. “He was physically very fit,” says Dement. McAllister recalls Randy beginning to say: “Don’t make me smell that, I can’t stand the smell.” Surprisingly though, his basketball game got better although this could be down to the amount he was playing. They tested his sense of taste, smell and hearing and after a while his cognitive and sensory abilities began to be affected. However, as the days wore on, the experiments they did on him threw up some unexpected results. “Randy had occasional Cokes but other than that, you know, no Dexedrine, Benzedrine, the du jour stimulants in those days,” he says.īack to San Diego and by the time William Dement arrived a few days into the experiment, Randy was upbeat and didn’t seem particularly impaired. Indeed, McAllister insists that those experiments involved the use of chemicals, which muddied the results. Experiments on animals, such as one which kept cats awake for 15 days at which point they died, point to whether other factors such as stress or chemicals are the cause of death, rather than lack of sleep. Our capacity to go without sleep is something that BBC Future has explored previously. Because the question was still unresolved on whether or not if you go without sleep long enough you will die.” “I was probably the only person on the planet at the time who had actually done sleep research,” Dement says “ were very worried that this might be something that would really be harmful to him. He had read about the experiment in a San Diego newspaper and immediately wanted to get involved – much to the relief of Randy’s parents. Whatever we could come up with.”ĭement is now an emeritus professor – but in 1964 he was just starting his research in the still new field of sleep science. “We realised there was no way we could do that and so we decided on the effect of sleep deprivation on cognitive abilities, performance on the basketball court. “ first version of it was the effect of sleeplessness on paranormal ability,” McAllister explains. Teamed with the creativity and cockiness that goes with teenage years, Bruce and his friend Randy decided they wanted to beat the world record for staying awake – which at the time was held by a DJ in Honolulu, who'd managed 260 hours, or just under 11 days. It ended on 8 January 1964 17-year-old Randy Gardner had managed to stay awake for 11 days and 25 minutes.īruce McAllister, one of the high school students who came up with the idea, says it stemmed from the simple need to come up with a science fair project. Īt the tail end of 1963 in America, the Beach Boys were playing on the radio, the Vietnam War had begun to draw in US involvement, high school kids were on their Christmas break and two teenagers were planning an experiment that would capture the nation’s attention. To listen to more episodes of Witness from the BBC World Service, please click here. This story is from The Boy Who Stayed Awake for Eleven Days, an episode of Witness produced and presented by Lucy Burns. As part of the series, we’re bringing back some of our favourite articles about the people and ideas that are changing the world with technology.
Over the next month, we’re celebrating technology and innovation in a new series called Bright Sparks.