Television Machines That Think

When CBS hired a newly minted Univac to analyze the vote in the 1952 presidential election, network officials thought it a nifty publicity stunt. But when the printout appeared, an embarrassed Charles Collingwood reported that the machine couldn't make up its mind. It was not until after midnight that CBS confessed the truth: Univac had correctly predicted Dwight Eisenhower would swamp Adlai Stevenson in one of the biggest landslides in history, but nobody believed it. It is a defining moment in THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, a surprisingly satisfying five-part history of the computer that starts April 6 on PBS....

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