The IQ test was invented by Alfred Binet as a way of identifying people who were having trouble in school because they were mentally slow. For this he came up with a large number of different questions that exercised the brain in various ways, and figured out how well an average kid would do. When he gave the test to a real kid he would take their performance and figure out a "mental age" that they performed at. Their intelligence quotient was then defined as 100 * (mental age) / (physical age).
The development of IQ tests aimed at adults which are defined based on a bell curve was a later innovation. The name was kept simply because it was then well-known.
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The IQ test was invented by Alfred Binet as a way of identifying people who were having trouble in school because they were mentally slow. For this he came up with a large number of different questions that exercised the brain in various ways, and figured out how well an average kid would do. When he gave the test to a real kid he would take their performance and figure out a "mental age" that they performed at. Their intelligence quotient was then defined as 100 * (mental age) / (physical age).
The development of IQ tests aimed at adults which are defined based on a bell curve was a later innovation. The name was kept simply because it was then well-known.