Inside, a psychology professor with a bold theory was waiting for them, convinced that one of humanity’s most basic needs might be nothing more than a bad habit.
A professor who saw sleep as wasted time
The experiment took place at George Washington University, in the Foggy Bottom neighbourhood, during the boom years of roaring‑twenties America. Factories ran late, neon lit the streets, and the culture worshipped speed and productivity. In that atmosphere, psychologist Frederick August Moss formed a radical idea: sleep, he claimed, was optional.
To Moss, spending roughly a third of life asleep looked like a scandalous loss of potential. If the brain could be trained to power through fatigue, he argued, people could work longer, think harder, and squeeze more output from every day. He saw himself as challenging a superstition, not a biological limit.
In the summer of 1925, Moss recruited seven volunteers and set them a stark task: stay awake for 60 straight hours in the name of science.
The students agreed to spend two and a half days without sleeping while Moss monitored their reactions, decision‑making and motor skills. Popular Science later reported on the project, turning it into one of the early publicised efforts to treat sleep as something that might be engineered away.
Two and a half days without sleep
The experiment was as much a social challenge as a medical one. The group needed to fight off boredom and the crushing urge to doze off, without the modern crutches of energy drinks or smartphones.
To stay awake, they tried a patchwork of tactics:
- Long conversations and debates to keep their minds active
- Car rides through the Virginia countryside, with the wind and motion as natural stimulants
- Impromptu baseball games to jolt the body into alertness
- Frequent, structured testing sessions that demanded concentration
Among the volunteers was 22‑year‑old student Thelma Hunt, already known for her intelligence and ambition. Alongside another participant, Louise Omwake, she would later become a prominent figure in American psychology. Hunt went on to shape research and policy in education, while Omwake rose to head the psychology department at their university.
The sleep‑deprivation weekend became a strange springboard: a stunt designed to dismiss sleep helped launch the careers of two women who would help explain why sleep matters.
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Their later success also highlighted how unusual their presence was. In the 1920s, psychology was still heavily male‑dominated. Taking part in a risky, attention‑grabbing experiment offered them a rare chance to show their resilience, intellect and dedication to research.
What Moss really measured
Moss was less interested in dreams or brain waves than in performance. He wanted numbers he could show to industry and policymakers, proof that people might function acceptably with far less rest.
Across the 60 hours, he repeatedly tested the students’ abilities. Accounts of the experiment describe a mix of tasks, including:
| Type of test | What it measured |
|---|---|
| Reaction time drills | Speed of reflexes and basic alertness |
| Memory exercises | Short‑term retention and recall under fatigue |
| Logical puzzles | Reasoning, problem‑solving and sustained focus |
| Practical tasks (such as parking a car) | Coordination, judgment and fine motor control |
As the hours ticked by, the students’ reaction times slowed. Their memory slipped. Their reasoning became less efficient and more error‑prone. But they did not collapse. They could still move, talk and carry out tasks, at least roughly. For Moss, that gap between visible functioning and measurable decline looked promising. He interpreted the absence of a dramatic breakdown as evidence that the body could be trained to shrug off sleepiness.
The experiment showed something Moss did not fully recognise: you can feel “fine enough” while your performance quietly falls apart.
Science starts to push back
Not everyone in 1925 shared Moss’s enthusiasm for sleepless productivity. That same year, researchers at the University of Chicago published work suggesting that cutting sleep safely was impossible. Any serious reduction, they argued, came with a cost to health and cognitive function.
The Chicago team’s view aligned with the broader scientific mood of the time: sleep looked like a built‑in requirement, not a negotiable lifestyle choice. Still, the tools to prove why were primitive. Electroencephalography, which measures brain activity, was in its infancy. Researchers could observe behaviour and basic physiology, but not the sleeping brain in detail.
In the decades that followed, that changed dramatically. By the mid‑twentieth century, Chicago again became a landmark site for sleep science. Nathaniel Kleitman and his student Eugene Aserinsky mapped the structure of sleep itself, identifying cycles and the now‑famous REM (rapid eye movement) stage associated with vivid dreaming.
Those studies revealed that sleep is an active process in which the brain reorganises, repairs and files away experience, rather than simply shutting down.
Later work showed how, during different phases of sleep, memories are consolidated, toxins are cleared from the brain, and crucial hormones are regulated. The emerging picture directly contradicted Moss’s assumption: skipping sleep is not like skipping a hobby, it is more like skipping maintenance on an engine that is already running at full speed.
From heroic wakefulness to health warning
Viewed from today, Moss’s 60‑hour marathon reads less like a productivity hack and more like a cautionary tale. Modern studies link chronic sleep loss to weight gain, weakened immunity, cardiovascular disease and a higher risk of depression and anxiety. Performance declines in ways that mirror what Moss saw, but on a longer, more damaging scale.
Large epidemiological projects tracking millions of people have also shown a U‑shaped curve between sleep duration and health outcomes: both very short and very long nights tend to appear alongside higher rates of illness and early death.
That does not mean sleeping long hours causes disease by itself. In many cases, extended sleep likely reflects conditions such as sleep apnoea, chronic pain or metabolic disorders. The key message is that healthy sleep sits in a middle band and that duration is only one piece of the puzzle.
How modern sleep science would rate a 60‑hour wake‑a‑thon
If a team proposed Moss’s experiment to an ethics committee today, it would face tough questions. Intentionally pushing people into severe sleep deprivation for non‑therapeutic reasons is now seen as risky, especially for young adults.
Current knowledge suggests that staying awake for 60 hours can trigger:
- Marked drops in attention, memory and decision‑making
- Microsleeps, brief uncontrollable lapses into sleep even with eyes open
- Mood swings, irritability and disinhibition
- Distorted perception, including mild hallucinations in some cases
- Temporary disruption of blood pressure, glucose control and immune response
There is also a safety angle. Asking sleep‑deprived people to carry out tasks such as driving, which Moss used as a test of coordination, would now raise alarms. Research routinely equates extreme fatigue with drunk‑level impairment behind the wheel.
What “sleep hygiene” really means
One legacy of a century of experiments, from Moss’s weekend vigil to modern brain imaging, is a shift in focus from glorifying sleeplessness to teaching people how to rest properly. Researchers now talk about “sleep hygiene”, a set of behaviours that supports consistent, good‑quality sleep.
These practices include keeping a regular schedule, dimming lights and screens in the evening, staying physically active during the day, avoiding heavy late‑night meals and alcohol, and making the bedroom cool, dark and quiet.
Where Moss saw sleep as time stolen from productivity, many employers and clinicians now treat it as a core resource that protects performance, creativity and long‑term health.
For anyone tempted by all‑nighters, the 1925 story offers a useful mental experiment. Imagine repeating Moss’s 60‑hour challenge before a big exam, a crucial surgery shift, or a major trading decision. The science points to the same outcome each time: you might remain standing, but the odds of subtle, high‑stakes mistakes would climb sharply.
In daily life, even smaller deficits matter. Cutting sleep by an hour or two a night for weeks does not feel as dramatic as Moss’s laboratory ordeal, yet research suggests the effects accumulate. People become slower, less accurate and more emotionally fragile, even while insisting they are “used to it”.
If the 1925 experiment started as a celebration of sleepless grit, its long afterlife in science tells a different story: the capacity to stay awake does not prove that sleep is unnecessary, only that humans are surprisingly good at pretending they can do without it—for a while.