In 1964, a 17-year-old named Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 days for a science fair, and his recovery took roughly one night, not the days a simple sleep-debt model would predict

In 1964, a 17-year-old named Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 days for a science fair, and his recovery took roughly one night, not the days a simple sleep-debt model would predict

On the eleventh day without sleep, Randy Gardner beat a Stanford sleep researcher at pinball. Not once, but every game. William Dement, one of the founders of modern sleep medicine, had driven down to San Diego to help keep the teenager awake and watch what prolonged wakefulness did to him, and he could not take a single round off a seventeen-year-old who had gone more than 250 hours without rest. The record was 264 hours, or eleven days and twe…