Episode 5: Project X

The election of 1952…

brought all kinds of new technology into the political sphere. The Eisenhower campaign experimented with the first television ads to feature an American presidential candidate. And on election night, CBS News premiered the first computer to predict an American election — the UNIVAC. Safe to say, that part didn’t go according to plan. But election night 1952 is ground zero for our current, political post-truth moment. If a computer and a targeted advertisement can both use heaps data to predict every citizen’s every decision, can voters really know things for themselves after all?

Image: CBS Correspondent Charles Collingwood reads the predictions coming in from the UNIVAC in 1952. (Getty Images)

KEY SOURCES

Sig Mickleson, the Director of CBS news, and a central character in our episode, wrote this book, from which our actors read in the episode. 

Rosser Reeves, the Madison Avenue ad man who invented the Unique Selling Proposition, wrote this book, which we used extensively in our reenactments. His papers, which we also used, are stored at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Also, be sure to check out one of Rosser Reeves’ most enduring works: his ad for M&Ms: “Melts in your mouth – not in your hand.” 

We learned a lot about the use of computer predictions in the 1952 election from Ira Chinoy’s 2010 dissertation Battle of the Brains. And look out for the book he’s writing about the UNIVAC and election night 1952.

Michael Levin’s plan, the smoking gun of micro-targeted political advertising, is in Reeves’ papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. 

This is the promotional video Remington Rand released for the UNIVAC in 1951.

We used the newspaper article, “Democrats See Radio-TV Blitz For Eisenhower: Assert Republicans Plan”, published on October 2 1952 in the New York Herald Tribune in our reenactments about ad strategies used by the Democrats and Republicans in the 1952 election.

Some of the original footage of CBS’ election night coverage, including its fake “UNIVAC” contraption with its blinking Christmas tree lights.

In these 20-second ad-spots, Eisenhower Answers America, one carefully segmented voting block at a time.

Here are the TV jingles for Stevenson and Eisenhower that we use in the episode.

Bonus Content:

An extended interview with CBS News Anchor, Bob Schieffer.

While reporting Episode 5: Project X, Jill spoke to Bob Schieffer, famed TV newsman of CBS, about how computers and the Internet changed the way we report on elections, and even the way they turn out. It's been sitting on the shelf here in the last archive for a little while now, but it feels eerily prescient. So, take a listen, take a deep breath, and good luck come November.