Michael Sokolski was born in 1926, near Rovno, Poland. His mother was killed and their home was bombed during the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Sokolski fled his hometown at the age of 16, and he enlisted in the Polish Armed Forces in the West under British command, becoming a tank driver. He was wounded at the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, and received the Italy Star.
After the war, Sokolski joined the Polish Resettlement Corps and studied at the British Institute of Technology in Fermo, Italy. By then, Rovno had become part of Ukraine, so Sokolski emigrated to Sweden, and then to the United States. He settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and reunited with his sister Helena and his aunt.
Sokolski earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1957, and became a U.S. citizen in 1963. For five years, Sokolski worked at IBM in Rochester, Minnesota.
In 1966, Sokolski founded the Datronics Company, and served as president until 1969, after which he moved to Santa Ana, California. Datronics was later sold to 3M.
In 1972, Sokolski joined Scantron Corporation, and served as the Executive Vice President of Engineering. The company had noticed the time investment required to grade multiple-choice standardized tests. By creating an Optical Mark Recognition (“OMR”) scanner, and specially designed answer sheets, Scantron was able to quickly speed up the grading process for educators and make standardized testing more accessible.
OMR scanning had been developed for test scoring previously. Richard Warren at IBM had experimented with optical mark sense systems for tabulating test results, obtaining U.S. Patent Nos. 2,150,256 and 2,010,653. The first successful optical mark-sense scanner was developed by Everett Franklin Lindquist, who was granted U.S. Patent No. 3,050,248. IBM also developed a successful optical mark-sense test-scoring machine and was issued U.S. Patent No. 2,944,734. The machine was commercialized as the IBM 1230 optical mark scoring reader in 1962, which was applied to test results, inventory management, and trouble reporting in addition to test results.
In the educational testing market, most of Scantron’s competitor sold scanning services. Scantron decided to go the other way—by developing and distributing an inexpensive scanner to schools, Scantron could then make profits from selling the special answer forms.
Sokolski earned two patents for Scantron: U.S. Patent Nos. 3,900,961 (“Test scoring apparatus”) and 3,943,642 (“Trim marks of equilateral triangular shape”).
The introduction of the Scantron sheet and scanner revolutionized tests given in all forms of formal education. Scantron now operates in 98% of the U.S. school districts, 56 countries, 48 ministries of education, and 94 of the top 100 U.S. universities. Scantron’s optical scanning technology has been widely used in secure balloting for in-person and mail-in elections, with paper ballots tallied by OMR optical scanning considered the most resilient and secure form of voting equipment.
Sokolski also served as a Technical Reserve for the Santa Ana Police Department in 1979, a lifetime member of the Advisory Board for the Orange County Sheriff Department, and was involved in both departments’ K-9 groups. Sokolski’s love of navigation fostered his interests in sailing and flying as a private pilot.
Sokolski became an avid fisherman in his retirement. He visited Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands and Lake Superior, and on the West Coast, the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia fishing for King Salmon. Sokolski caught several 50-plus pound salmon. In total, he made 123 trips over 25 years.
Sokolski treated the sea with such integrity that he was made an honorary Chief of the Haida Nation of British Columbia, named Kilssay (Chief) G uud (Eagle).
Sokolski died in 2012 at the age of 85 due to congestive heart failure.
Scantron allowed standardized testing to become ubiquitous in the United States and abroad, and improved opportunities for countless students by increasing the efficiency of test-scoring.