Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting
Autor Ira Chinoyen Limba Engleză Hardback – mai 2024
Yet this innovation would help fuel an obsession with numbers as a way of understanding and shaping politics. It would engender controversy down to our own time. And it would herald a future in which the public square would go digital. The gamble was fueled by a crisis of credibility stemming from faulty election-night forecasts four years earlier, in 1948, combined with a lackluster presentation of returns. What transpired in 1952 is a complex tale of responses to innovation, which Ira Chinoy makes understandable via a surprising history of election nights as venues for rolling out new technologies, refining methods of prediction, and providing opportunities for news organizations to shine.
In Predicting the Winner Chinoy tells in detail for the first time the story of the 1952 election night—a night with continuing implications for the way forward from the dramatic events of 2020–21 and for future election nights in the United States.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781640125964
ISBN-10: 1640125965
Pagini: 384
Ilustrații: 4 photographs, 15 illustrations, index
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.75 kg
Editura: Potomac Books Inc
Colecția Potomac Books
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1640125965
Pagini: 384
Ilustrații: 4 photographs, 15 illustrations, index
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.75 kg
Editura: Potomac Books Inc
Colecția Potomac Books
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Ira Chinoy is an associate professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, where he founded and directs the Future of Information Alliance. He is a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post, where he also served as director of computer-assisted reporting. Chinoy was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting and has won the George Polk Award and other top journalism awards.
Extras
1
Fearsome Contraptions
Nobody saw it in real time. How could they? The history of American
elections changed profoundly on the night of November 4, 1952. The
candidates were at the center of attention, of course, but they were not
central to this change. We can see its significance now with decades of
hindsight. Something never tried before was launched live and untested
on national television. Viewers witnessed an outside-the-box approach
to predicting the winner from early returns using something new—
computers. Like exhibits in a freak show, the computers were referred
to as “electronic brains” and “mechanical monsters.” That’s the way it
can be with innovations—considered laughable before they become so
locked-in that we cannot imagine life before them. This innovation would
help fuel an obsession with numbers as a way of understanding—and
shaping—politics. It would also engender controversy right down to
our own time. And it would herald a future in which the public square
would go digital. Yet on that night, this path was in no way guaranteed
or even envisioned. Americans did not yet have computers at home or at
work. Most had never seen one. The thinking in broadcast news circles
was that the flashing lights of these newfangled gizmos as they spit out
forecasts might provide an edge. Television news executives hoped to
get a jump on the competition both in calling the election and attracting
viewers. But the whole enterprise of reaching outside the box with
something so new was an enormous gamble. And it is important to
understand—especially in our own time—that this gamble was under-
taken in response to a crisis of credibility. This crisis was the fallout from
election-night forecasts four years earlier that turned out to be upside
down. What’s more, a lackluster presentation of returns on television
in 1948 was at odds with television’s promise as a new visual medium
for news. What transpired four years later, in 1952, is a complex tale of
innovation in response to crisis, along with reactions that ranged from
enthusiasm to ridicule to outright resistance. The events surrounding
that election night in 1952 also offer us a way to think about another
more recent inflection point—the vexing events of 2020—and the future
of election nights in America.
At 8:00 p.m. on election night in 1952, cbs launched its coverage
from a cavernous studio above Grand Central Terminal, the massive
rail hub in Midtown Manhattan. A camera perched aloft on a swivel
in the middle of the studio slowly surveyed the scene and zoomed in
toward the anchor desk. The zoom lens itself was a recent invention.
Viewers found themselves immersed in the hubbub. Walter Cronkite
was anchoring his first election night on television. The audience could
see for themselves what he described as a teeming beehive. The studio
was packed with people, cameras, cables, telephones, typewriters, adding
machines, and all manner of other equipment. A massive banner that
read “cbs Television Election Headquarters” was installed along one
wall. The click-clacking of teletype machines signaled a steady flow of
wire service dispatches delivering a rising mass of vote counts. Beneath
the banner, and in view for the first few seconds, was an exotic-looking
device about the size and shape of an organ console. It had a keyboard
and rows of blinking lights. Viewers would learn later in the broadcast
that this was the so-called “supervisory control panel” for a Universal
Automatic Computer, known simply as univac, one of the pioneering
computer models in a quickly growing field. The control panel was not
actually connected to a univac computer. Rather, the panel had been
installed on the cbs set as a prop. Its blinking lights were sleight of
hand, produced by something akin to a Christmas tree light circuit.
The actual UNIVAC was a behemoth. It weighed in at more than eight
tons, too big to move to cbs for the broadcast. So it would be generating
forecasts from the place where it was built, one hundred miles away
in Philadelphia. Tensions were running high behind the scenes at the
univac home base.4 And the stress was only going to get more intense.
The first predictions soon generated by the computer would be so far
from the expected outcome that they would not be released to the network.
Instead, the computer’s keepers would scramble for a solution to
this mystery. How could their eight-ton baby be so wrong, they wondered.
The UNIVAC programmers and engineers had built redundancy
into their systems to guard against errors in data entry and calculation.
But they had not considered what they would do if the computer’s first
forecast diverged wildly from expectation—as, in fact, it did.
Fearsome Contraptions
Nobody saw it in real time. How could they? The history of American
elections changed profoundly on the night of November 4, 1952. The
candidates were at the center of attention, of course, but they were not
central to this change. We can see its significance now with decades of
hindsight. Something never tried before was launched live and untested
on national television. Viewers witnessed an outside-the-box approach
to predicting the winner from early returns using something new—
computers. Like exhibits in a freak show, the computers were referred
to as “electronic brains” and “mechanical monsters.” That’s the way it
can be with innovations—considered laughable before they become so
locked-in that we cannot imagine life before them. This innovation would
help fuel an obsession with numbers as a way of understanding—and
shaping—politics. It would also engender controversy right down to
our own time. And it would herald a future in which the public square
would go digital. Yet on that night, this path was in no way guaranteed
or even envisioned. Americans did not yet have computers at home or at
work. Most had never seen one. The thinking in broadcast news circles
was that the flashing lights of these newfangled gizmos as they spit out
forecasts might provide an edge. Television news executives hoped to
get a jump on the competition both in calling the election and attracting
viewers. But the whole enterprise of reaching outside the box with
something so new was an enormous gamble. And it is important to
understand—especially in our own time—that this gamble was under-
taken in response to a crisis of credibility. This crisis was the fallout from
election-night forecasts four years earlier that turned out to be upside
down. What’s more, a lackluster presentation of returns on television
in 1948 was at odds with television’s promise as a new visual medium
for news. What transpired four years later, in 1952, is a complex tale of
innovation in response to crisis, along with reactions that ranged from
enthusiasm to ridicule to outright resistance. The events surrounding
that election night in 1952 also offer us a way to think about another
more recent inflection point—the vexing events of 2020—and the future
of election nights in America.
At 8:00 p.m. on election night in 1952, cbs launched its coverage
from a cavernous studio above Grand Central Terminal, the massive
rail hub in Midtown Manhattan. A camera perched aloft on a swivel
in the middle of the studio slowly surveyed the scene and zoomed in
toward the anchor desk. The zoom lens itself was a recent invention.
Viewers found themselves immersed in the hubbub. Walter Cronkite
was anchoring his first election night on television. The audience could
see for themselves what he described as a teeming beehive. The studio
was packed with people, cameras, cables, telephones, typewriters, adding
machines, and all manner of other equipment. A massive banner that
read “cbs Television Election Headquarters” was installed along one
wall. The click-clacking of teletype machines signaled a steady flow of
wire service dispatches delivering a rising mass of vote counts. Beneath
the banner, and in view for the first few seconds, was an exotic-looking
device about the size and shape of an organ console. It had a keyboard
and rows of blinking lights. Viewers would learn later in the broadcast
that this was the so-called “supervisory control panel” for a Universal
Automatic Computer, known simply as univac, one of the pioneering
computer models in a quickly growing field. The control panel was not
actually connected to a univac computer. Rather, the panel had been
installed on the cbs set as a prop. Its blinking lights were sleight of
hand, produced by something akin to a Christmas tree light circuit.
The actual UNIVAC was a behemoth. It weighed in at more than eight
tons, too big to move to cbs for the broadcast. So it would be generating
forecasts from the place where it was built, one hundred miles away
in Philadelphia. Tensions were running high behind the scenes at the
univac home base.4 And the stress was only going to get more intense.
The first predictions soon generated by the computer would be so far
from the expected outcome that they would not be released to the network.
Instead, the computer’s keepers would scramble for a solution to
this mystery. How could their eight-ton baby be so wrong, they wondered.
The UNIVAC programmers and engineers had built redundancy
into their systems to guard against errors in data entry and calculation.
But they had not considered what they would do if the computer’s first
forecast diverged wildly from expectation—as, in fact, it did.
Cuprins
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Fearsome Contraptions
2. We Wanted to Do Something Unusual
3. Are Computers Newsworthy?
4. Project X versus Operation Monrobot
5. Stirred Up by the Roughest Campaign of Modern Times
6. This Is Not a Joke or a Trick
7. The Mechanical Genius
8. The Trouble with Machines Is People
9. A Hazard of Being Discredited in the Public’s Mind
10. Truly the Question of Our Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
1. Fearsome Contraptions
2. We Wanted to Do Something Unusual
3. Are Computers Newsworthy?
4. Project X versus Operation Monrobot
5. Stirred Up by the Roughest Campaign of Modern Times
6. This Is Not a Joke or a Trick
7. The Mechanical Genius
8. The Trouble with Machines Is People
9. A Hazard of Being Discredited in the Public’s Mind
10. Truly the Question of Our Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
"An appealing deep dive into the intersecting history of journalism, technology, and electoral politics."—Publishers Weekly
"This title showcases Chinoy's capacity for meticulous detail, fascinating research, and strong sources. Readers who study the intersection of politics and technology will relish this book."—Library Journal, starred review
"A new history of computer forecasting in national elections is a timely read as November approaches. . . . Chinoy's background as a journalist prepared him for the digging required of a historical researcher. . . . His research and writing skills are evident throughout the text. He is a first-class prose stylist who writes with the gravitas of a researcher who knows his subject inside and out."—Clayton Trutor, nextavenue.org
“In Predicting the Winner, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative-journalist-turned-historian Ira Chinoy tells the hair-raising story of the first widely televised U.S. presidential election, in 1952. But it wasn’t only televised. It was computerized. With predictions made by robots and whirring, blinking, flashing machines. Based on stunning archival research, the tale offers a vital parable for our times.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
“A fascinating, thoroughly researched account of how the electronic computer muscled its way into our consciousness during the 1952 presidential election, when both the computer and the medium of television were new. Some of the ways established veteran journalists wrestled with their relationship to the ‘giant brain’ are amusing, but in light of recent events, perhaps the joke is on us. You are guaranteed to have fun reading it.”—Paul Ceruzzi, coauthor of A New History of Modern Computing
“This well-researched book is a road map for practices that served as a foundation for election-night reporting up to our own time. And perhaps most important, it shows the challenges faced by pollsters and prognosticators when predicting how an election night will turn out, even in today’s world of AI and vastly more powerful predictive models than those first tried out decades ago.”—Jack Speer, newscaster, NPR
“The year 1952 was an inflection point in American culture—the introduction of computers, projections, and even TV news into our election nights. In this insightful and immensely readable telling of the tale, historian and journalist Ira Chinoy explains how the innovations came about and how they are relevant to our current times. This is a book for anyone who cares about politics, thinks about technology, and wants to know where we are going by understanding where we have been.”—Tom Rosenstiel, coauthor of The Elements of Journalism
“Election night in the United States is the most prominent and fraught intersection of politics, technology, and culture. Ira Chinoy’s deeply researched and beautifully narrated account of computers and television in their shared infancy explains how this came to be and why it is so important to understand.”—Robert Friedel, author of A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium
“Election night on television is dominated by touch-screen maps and other technological wizardry. Predicting The Winner takes us back to when computers made their infamous debut in forecasting the next president on national television. Ira Chinoy uses the researching and reporting skills that won him multiple Pulitzer Prizes to dig out this important but mostly untold moment.”—Mike Conway, author of Contested Ground: “The Tunnel” and the Struggle over Television News in Cold War America
Descriere
Predicting the Winner is a riveting narrative about election night 1952, when computers were used for the first time to predict winners from early returns and the results were launched live and untested on the newest medium for news: television.