Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the known
Speaker 1: things go, A corridor of the mind, lined with shelves,
Speaker 1: stocked with proof, and cluttered with snacks. Here on top
Speaker 1: of this old television set, a pack of M and m's,
Speaker 1: Oh does the TV still work? I've listened to everybody
Speaker 1: on TV and radio. I've read the papers and magazines.
Speaker 1: I've tried, but I'm still confused. Who's right? What's right?
Speaker 1: What should I believe? What are the facts? How can
Speaker 1: I tell? Yish sounds like something I would say. That's
Speaker 1: why I come here to this place, this cabinet of curiosities,
Speaker 1: a place that stores the facts that matter and matters
Speaker 1: a fact, it's all that stays between a reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: and the chaos of uncertainty. It lies in a time
Speaker 1: between now and then. The sign on the door reads
Speaker 1: the last Archive. Step through that door to a studio
Speaker 1: at the Columbia Broadcasting System on Election Night nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: Good eighth and everyone. This was Walter grind Guide speaking
Speaker 1: to you from CBS Television. Election headquarters are in New
Speaker 1: York City. The vague Election Night nineteen fifty two, the
Speaker 1: year when the United States fixed its thirty President, Welcome
Speaker 1: to election Night. But Election Night nineteen fifty two wasn't
Speaker 1: just any night, because everything you know about how campaigns
Speaker 1: are run and how results are announced, polls, targeted advertising,
Speaker 1: breathless television coverage, edge of your seat, computer projections, it
Speaker 1: all started right here in nineteen fifty two, with Walter
Speaker 1: Cronkite just settling in for the long night ahead and
Speaker 1: CBS Studio forty one on the third floor of Grand
Speaker 1: Central Station, New York. As CBS's coverage begins, the camera
Speaker 1: pans across a crowded, frantic newsroom, teletype machines, adding machines,
Speaker 1: paper spread everywhere, dozens of telephones, some guys smoking at
Speaker 1: the back of the room near a giant wall map
Speaker 1: of the United States, a map that CBS will fill
Speaker 1: out as the returns come in. They couldn't color the
Speaker 1: states red and blue, because in nineteen fifty two hardly
Speaker 1: anyone had a color TV. Instead, states that went Democrat
Speaker 1: would be covered with black. Republicans got stripes. Not so
Speaker 1: much elephants as zebras bomby weather over most of the
Speaker 1: United States today, and a record turnout apparently throughout the
Speaker 1: United States, a record turnout so many votes to out.
Speaker 1: This election would change how Americans predicted the outcome of
Speaker 1: the election. It would change all sorts of things about elections.
Speaker 1: But let me first remind you who was running. The
Speaker 1: Republicans put forward as their candidate General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ike,
Speaker 1: the general behind D Day, military man, grandfather, straight shooter.
Speaker 1: Republicans came up with the slogan, I like Ike, I President,
Speaker 1: I President, I President President, and everybody really did like Ike.
Speaker 1: This is the election where a likability became a thing
Speaker 1: for the Democrats. The incumbent, Harry S. Truman was out.
Speaker 1: The Democrat who wanted to be in was Illinois Governor
Speaker 1: Adlai E. Stevenson. Stevenson wasn't affable or folksy like Eisenhower.
Speaker 1: He was learned and experienced, dignified, he might even say aristocratic.
Speaker 1: Stevenson had and born to a political family. His grandfather
Speaker 1: had been Grover Cleveland's vice president. Stevenson held himself above
Speaker 1: the messiness, the tackiness of campaigns. Trustworthy. He was supposed
Speaker 1: to be trustworthy. Both Stevenson a man you can believe
Speaker 1: in the general versus the governor likable Ike versus the
Speaker 1: man you can believe in sin anyway. Like Walter Cronkite said,
Speaker 1: voting in the nineteen fifty two race looked to be
Speaker 1: a record turnout, a turnout so big that the wire
Speaker 1: Service thought it might take until the next day to
Speaker 1: count the votes. We're going to be giving you all
Speaker 1: of the figures just as quickly as we can, but
Speaker 1: we'll no other results sometime the night, early in the morning,
Speaker 1: results that very night that would be fast, so fast.
Speaker 1: Historians sometimes call this era after the Second World War
Speaker 1: the Great Acceleration. There were races, the arms race, the
Speaker 1: space race, even NASCAR racing started then, but in a
Speaker 1: bigger way. Everything got sped up, transportation, communication, production, consumption, everything.
Speaker 1: Knowledge is to take the form of mysteries, things only
Speaker 1: God could know. Then came facts, then numbers, and then
Speaker 1: during the Great Acceleration, numbers began to yield to data,
Speaker 1: including the votes counted on election night. CBS wanted to
Speaker 1: count them faster than anyone else. Welcome to the Last Archive,
Speaker 1: the show about how we know what we know, how
Speaker 1: we used to know things, and why it seems sometimes
Speaker 1: lately as if we don't know anything at all. I'm
Speaker 1: Jill Lapoor on the edge of my seat, waiting for
Speaker 1: the returns to come in. Aside from all those television cameras,
Speaker 1: there was another machine in the CBS studio on election
Speaker 1: Night nineteen fifty two, a machine most Americans had never
Speaker 1: seen before, a console blinking. The development of modern electronic
Speaker 1: digital computers began with early man, who used his digits
Speaker 1: or fingers to keep track of the things around him
Speaker 1: one weapon, two animals, and three wins. A few thousand
Speaker 1: years after that Caveman, the first general purpose digital computers
Speaker 1: were built by the Allies in the Second World War.
Speaker 1: They were used to calculate missile trajectories and to break codes.
Speaker 1: After the war, the first commercial digital computer was built
Speaker 1: by an office equipment company called Remington Rand. I guess
Speaker 1: because there were more things to count than one weapon,
Speaker 1: two animals, and three wives. Even through the use of
Speaker 1: present day office equipment, it becomes increasingly difficult to process
Speaker 1: this accumulation to obtain the information we need. So many facts,
Speaker 1: so many numbers, so much data. Human Khan needed a
Speaker 1: new kind of machine to meet this need for high
Speaker 1: speed data processing. The scientists and technicians of the Eckert
Speaker 1: Mauchley division of Remington Rand have created a miracle of
Speaker 1: electronic development, UNIVAC, a complete electronic system for sorting, classifying, computing,
Speaker 1: and decision making. The UNIVAC the Universal Automatic Computer. Remington
Speaker 1: Rand had sold one to the US Census Bureau to
Speaker 1: count the nineteen fifty census. Right now, UNIVAK is handling
Speaker 1: automatically and economically unbelievable volumes of statistical work for the
Speaker 1: United States Bureau of the Census. Work that formerly took
Speaker 1: weeks and months to do is now being done in
Speaker 1: a matter of hours by UNIVAK. Okay, so the Census
Speaker 1: Bureau needed the machine to count the census. But who
Speaker 1: else could possibly need a crazy, expensive UNIVAC, a machine
Speaker 1: the size of a small truck. Hardly anyone, it seemed.
Speaker 1: But Remington Rand wanted to sell them, so they had
Speaker 1: to keep pitching them and pitching them and pitching them.
Speaker 1: UNIVAK is rapidly turning out answers, answers which have profound
Speaker 1: significance in the lives of all of us. Maybe UNIVAC
Speaker 1: could count votes. Maybe on election night, UNIVAC could even
Speaker 1: know the winner before any human could. Maybe the UNIVAC
Speaker 1: might actually get it right, because in the last election,
Speaker 1: everyone had gotten it wrong. Thomas Dewey and his family
Speaker 1: waited expectantly for a concession. In nineteen forty eight, Truman
Speaker 1: had run against the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey.
Speaker 1: All the big posters were sure Dewey would win. Reporters
Speaker 1: were just as sure. The Chicago Tribune went to press early,
Speaker 1: too early, with one hundred and fifty thousand papers bearing
Speaker 1: the headline Dewey defeats Truman. Dear listener, he did not
Speaker 1: a man of the people had accomplished a political miracle.
Speaker 1: At his home in Independence, Missouri. President Tillman accepted the
Speaker 1: congratulations of the nation. TV got it wrong, too, But
Speaker 1: TV didn't matter in nineteen forty eight, first because hardly
Speaker 1: anyone owned a television set then, and second, the TV
Speaker 1: coverage in nineteen forty eight was basically just live film
Speaker 1: of radio guys snoozing and waiting for the returns. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two everything was supposed to be different.
Speaker 1: People finally had television sets. Watching would be fun, the
Speaker 1: announcers would call it right. So back to election night
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two. It seems to me that television
Speaker 1: has certainly come into its own this year. This time,
Speaker 1: everything seems to be specially designed for television. CBS had
Speaker 1: put a lot of effort and money into its coverage,
Speaker 1: every last bell and whistle. They'd also made it into
Speaker 1: a race. They really wanted to call the election early. Ideally,
Speaker 1: they wanted to call the election first, except they didn't
Speaker 1: want to call it so early that they'd get it wrong.
Speaker 1: But in case that happened, they needed a scapegoat. Enter
Speaker 1: the computer. Millions of Americans had televisions, but how many
Speaker 1: had computers. None. At the time, there were, by my count,
Speaker 1: six computers in the whole country. It's possible I have
Speaker 1: my numbers wrong. Remember I am only human. But here's
Speaker 1: where what CBS wanted and what Remington Rand wanted lined
Speaker 1: up perfectly. Remington Ran needed a chance to show how
Speaker 1: useful computers are, a showcase. CBS needed a stunt and
Speaker 1: also a scapegoat. It was a match made in heaven.
Speaker 1: These things tend to seem inevitable after the fact, but
Speaker 1: of course history doesn't work that way. Most things happened
Speaker 1: by accident. A few months before election day, a guy
Speaker 1: from CBS went out to lunch with a guy from
Speaker 1: Remington Rand. CBS wanted to put in a big order
Speaker 1: for you know, typewriters and calculators, the sorts of machines
Speaker 1: that figured it needed to stock up on for election night.
Speaker 1: But the Remington Ran guy said, have you considered a UNIVAC.
Speaker 1: CBS's director of News and Public affairs guy called Sig
Speaker 1: Mickelson heard about the lunch. He decided to go to
Speaker 1: the Remington Ran factory in Philadelphia to take a look.
Speaker 1: He hopped on the train and went to meet the UNIVAC.
Speaker 1: The machine was a monster, a massive electronic vacuum tubes
Speaker 1: interconnected by miles of copper wire and cooled by noisy fans.
Speaker 1: Michelson was supposed to meet a colleague of his there
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, the dashing CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood. As legend
Speaker 1: has it, Collingwood was running lee when he arrived. The
Speaker 1: printer hooked up to the UNIVAC spat out a short message, Collingwood,
Speaker 1: you are a lap Where have you been? This is
Speaker 1: what's known among historians is a fact too good to
Speaker 1: check in this sense that this never happened. But I'm
Speaker 1: telling you about it because Michelson said it happened, and
Speaker 1: I love it. Back to things that did happen. CBS
Speaker 1: decided to proceed with what it called I'm not making
Speaker 1: this up project. Here's the deal they worked out. CBS
Speaker 1: would get the services of Univac for Election night, but
Speaker 1: the machine would stay in Philadelphia. It was just too
Speaker 1: big to bring to New York. It weighed sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: pounds and had five thousand vacuum tubes. But the CBS
Speaker 1: studio in New York needed to look like it had
Speaker 1: a computer on set, so Charles Collingwood would sit at
Speaker 1: the UNIVAC looking thing of magic a console. There's actually
Speaker 1: just a dummy, a fake. The giant computer prop at
Speaker 1: CBS did, however, light up. It blinked for the benefit
Speaker 1: of viewers at home, as if it were the real
Speaker 1: electronic brain thinking. It's like a Christmas tree light timer basically,
Speaker 1: and if you watch it long enough you see the
Speaker 1: pattern of the lights. Just appened. I first learned about
Speaker 1: the story in a dissertation, an amazing dissertation called Battle
Speaker 1: of the Brains by Ira Chenoi, and I don't say
Speaker 1: dissertations are amazing all that often. Chenoi is a professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Maryland. But before he got his PhD,
Speaker 1: he was the director of Computer assisted Reporting at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Before that, he'd been an investigative reporter. I
Speaker 1: wanted to visit him in his office in Maryland so
Speaker 1: that we could watch this footage together, footage that he'd
Speaker 1: discovered in the archives. It looks great. It does look
Speaker 1: really good. And actually, I don't know if you can
Speaker 1: see it here, but I actually saw one of these
Speaker 1: when I went out to the Computer Instry Museum, and
Speaker 1: I think it has an ashtray in it. Actually, Chenoy
Speaker 1: and I watched the footage where Walter Cronkite and Charles
Speaker 1: Collingwood on election night wait for the first prediction from
Speaker 1: the machine, and now perhaps a prediction on how this
Speaker 1: voting is going. What's the vote that has been so
Speaker 1: far means, let's turn to that miracle of the modern age,
Speaker 1: the electronic brain universe and the Charles Collingwood. Collingwood's on
Speaker 1: live television looking at a display offscreen, waiting for a
Speaker 1: prediction that he's supposed to read out loud. UNIVAC is
Speaker 1: going to try to predict the winner for us, just
Speaker 1: as early as we can possibly get the returns. Then
Speaker 1: this is not a joke or a trick. It's an experiment.
Speaker 1: We think it's going to work, we don't know. We
Speaker 1: hope it'll work, but there's nothing coming in. It's incredibly
Speaker 1: awkward to watch. They didn't call this stuff cringe TV then,
Speaker 1: but this is cringe TV. Can you say something? UNIVAC,
Speaker 1: have you got anything to say to the television audience?
Speaker 1: Apparently the UNIVAC in Philadelphia had made a prediction. It
Speaker 1: predicted that Eisenhower would win in a landslide, but given
Speaker 1: that exit polls had the race neck and neck, that
Speaker 1: prediction seemed bananas. So, supposedly, not wanting to screw up Remington,
Speaker 1: Rand decided not to send that prediction on to CBS
Speaker 1: in New York. Remington's second guest its own machine, which
Speaker 1: left Collingwood hanging and CBS without a prediction to announce.
Speaker 1: You're a very impolite in Shane, I must say, it
Speaker 1: was as if the whole election had suddenly gone off script,
Speaker 1: when in fact, so much of the campaign had been
Speaker 1: so entirely scripted. There's more to this story. There are documents,
Speaker 1: There is evidence. My producer Ben has filed a copy
Speaker 1: of that campaign script in his desk here in the
Speaker 1: last archive. So the supercomputer UNIVAC failed its first public
Speaker 1: audition as the predictor of voter behavior, at least though
Speaker 1: it was something obvious, a giant machine with these blinking
Speaker 1: lights right there on television. A lot more subtle stuff
Speaker 1: changed during that election, too, stuff that's been forgotten because
Speaker 1: now it's everywhere President I President. Television advert that was
Speaker 1: new two not jingles. There'd been campaign song since forever.
Speaker 1: But nineteen fifty two saw the introduction of a particular
Speaker 1: kind of television advertising, the targeted political ad. Lately, all
Speaker 1: political ads are targeted. They're targeted by computers as unairing
Speaker 1: his missiles. But in nineteen fifty two, targeting was done
Speaker 1: by hand, and political television advertising was invented by a
Speaker 1: man named Rosser Reeves. Think Don Draper and Madmen, but
Speaker 1: even slicker the very best Madison Avenue could offer. Rosser
Speaker 1: Reeves he was the man. He owned one of the
Speaker 1: world's biggest rubies. He led the US Jess team on
Speaker 1: a trip to the Soviet Union. He invested in island
Speaker 1: real estate. He captained yachts. He flew planes mainly, though
Speaker 1: he created modern television advertising. Reeves decided that there were
Speaker 1: many advantages to be gained by adopting a new form
Speaker 1: of political advertising, the short spot commercial. Nicholson, that executive
Speaker 1: from CBS who brought in the UNIVAC, he knew all
Speaker 1: about Reeves he later wrote about it. He had a
Speaker 1: hunch that the sixty second advertising spot could be used
Speaker 1: in the way the soap, food and cigarette companies were
Speaker 1: using them with spectacular success. In nineteen fifty two, Reeves
Speaker 1: took his talents to politics. He went to the Republican Convention.
Speaker 1: The first convention broadcasts start to finish on television. Reeves
Speaker 1: was there, but instead of watching from the convention hall,
Speaker 1: he watched the keynote speech on TV from a hotel room.
Speaker 1: The crowds inside the stadium were enthusiastic, but watching the
Speaker 1: convention on TV, Reeves thought the speeches were dreadful, too
Speaker 1: many ideas, too many words. So he devised a test
Speaker 1: to see which people remembered better a televised speech or
Speaker 1: a televised commercial. Less than ten percent of people remembered
Speaker 1: the speech remembered the commercial. Ree thought that was because
Speaker 1: speeches usually have a lot of ideas, too many for television.
Speaker 1: He believed in something he called the unique selling proposition,
Speaker 1: the USP. What is a USP. It's a theory of
Speaker 1: the ideal selling concept. It is a condensation, a verbal shorthand,
Speaker 1: if you will, of what makes a campaign work. It
Speaker 1: is the hidden secret of literally thousands of the most
Speaker 1: successful advertising campaigns ever written. Reeves often made pitches over
Speaker 1: meetings at Manhattan Swinky twenty one club, where everyone was
Speaker 1: always several martinis deep. He told them that his unique
Speaker 1: selling proposition had three rules. Number one, each advertisement must
Speaker 1: make a proposition to the consumer, not just words, not
Speaker 1: just product puffery. Each advertisement must say to each reader,
Speaker 1: buy this product and you'll get this specific benefit. Number two,
Speaker 1: the proposition must be the one that the competition either
Speaker 1: cannot or does not offer. Number Three, the proposition must
Speaker 1: be so strong that it can move the mass millions.
Speaker 1: That's from reeves book Reality and Advertising. My producer Ben
Speaker 1: and I decided to go get a copy of it.
Speaker 1: So we went to the basement of Widener Library at
Speaker 1: Harvard together. And when I say basement, I mean that
Speaker 1: in the deepest sense. To get to Reeves, you take
Speaker 1: the elevator four stories down and then you walk through
Speaker 1: a tunnel. So the Fuci tunnel, it's so much better
Speaker 1: that it used to be here, used to be these
Speaker 1: big plastic buckets down here because they're just all these
Speaker 1: seal these pipes. They would just but you know what,
Speaker 1: like what does it still have that humidity? You know
Speaker 1: it's a humidity treatment smell. I think it would humiliate
Speaker 1: Reeves to know this. But after you go through that
Speaker 1: sweaty tunnel, you have to go down another level, down
Speaker 1: another elevator to finally get to the stacks and the
Speaker 1: shelf where his book is housed. His best advertisements all
Speaker 1: follow those three rules of the USP. So wonder Bread
Speaker 1: helps build strong bodies in twelve ways, Anderson gives you fast, fast,
Speaker 1: fast relief. But my personal favorite was the campaign he
Speaker 1: wrote for Eminem's Which man has the Eminem and chocolate
Speaker 1: cann that's ordinary chocolate can it's melting, But this one
Speaker 1: there's no chocolate mint because built chocolate melts in your mouth,
Speaker 1: not in your hand. Reeves said Republicans should run ad
Speaker 1: spots and sell Eisenhower like Eminem's. EIKE's campaign signed him
Speaker 1: right up, even though Eisenhower himself had yet to be convinced.
Speaker 1: Reeves took six weeks off and hold himself up in
Speaker 1: a hotel to write ad copy. He had all of
Speaker 1: Eisenhower's speech is sent over, but he didn't read them.
Speaker 1: I was too busy with the political maelstrom to sit
Speaker 1: down personally and read all of and how was rather
Speaker 1: dreary speeches. So we had other people do that. They
Speaker 1: drew up a list of topics that the general favored.
Speaker 1: Reeves showed that list to George Gallop, the polster who
Speaker 1: ransom numbers, and told Reeves which three topics pulled best
Speaker 1: with voters. One corruption in government, two high prices and
Speaker 1: high taxes. Three war. Those three topics still pull well.
Speaker 1: They're evergreens today though computer driven targeted advertising, polling, and
Speaker 1: election predictions are all tangled up on your iPhone as
Speaker 1: if they're one thing. But they first got tangled up
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two when the polsters and the admin.
Speaker 1: We're actually doing much the same thing as the UNIVAC
Speaker 1: was trying to do, running the numbers, coming up with
Speaker 1: a prediction. Are we okay with that? I mean we are,
Speaker 1: because this is our world. But still if we here
Speaker 1: in the last archive are wondering who killed truth? I'm
Speaker 1: looking at you, Rosser Reeves. Reeves had hired a friend
Speaker 1: of his to run the numbers for him, a guy
Speaker 1: named Michael Levin. Ben brought copies of what he found
Speaker 1: in the archives when we went looking for Reeves's book
Speaker 1: fifty thousand Leagues beneath the library. This one is Michael
Speaker 1: Levin's plan. It's called how to ensure an Eisenhower victory
Speaker 1: in November, And this is what Reeves commissioned his numbers
Speaker 1: guy Levin, who worked at a different firm, Yeah, to
Speaker 1: write up about basically how to target the ads, where
Speaker 1: to run them, what counties, how often. This is a
Speaker 1: smoking gun of micro targeted advertising right here. We haven't
Speaker 1: ranked here. Levin carved the country into voting blocks, the
Speaker 1: southern vote, the black vote, the farm vote, the middle class.
Speaker 1: He thought this way since Roosevelt most of the country
Speaker 1: had voted Democratic, but that could change now that the
Speaker 1: economy was good. People weren't so keen on paying taxes anymore.
Speaker 1: They'd rather keep their money and spend it on some
Speaker 1: of the things they saw, and all those television ads
Speaker 1: dishwashers and dog food. To make the electoral math work
Speaker 1: in Republicans favor. Levin said they needed to flip the
Speaker 1: vote in forty nine counties in twelve states where they
Speaker 1: narrowly lost the last election. Levin called this block of
Speaker 1: states the Great Lakes Girdle. This was at a time when,
Speaker 1: by the way, people call parts of the country girdles,
Speaker 1: and now we call them belts, which is sad to me. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Forget kissing babies, shaking hands, and meeting voters, cultivating civic
Speaker 1: life and political debate. Instead, Levin said, divide the electorate
Speaker 1: into market segments and then blitz those key counties with
Speaker 1: the custom made TV ads. Is there a new way
Speaker 1: of campaigning that can guarantee victory for Eisenhower in November?
Speaker 1: The answer is yes. Most people don't know the power
Speaker 1: of spot. However, here are the cold facts. The humble
Speaker 1: radio or TV spot can deliver more listeners for less
Speaker 1: money than any other form advertising. This pitch, you may
Speaker 1: have noticed, sounds a little bit different from the Loven plan,
Speaker 1: but they were filed together in Roster's papers and the archives.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like lipstick on a pig, though
Speaker 1: like at least reefses, justlipstick, no pig. Here's the turn
Speaker 1: where commercial television advertising becomes political television advertising just lipstick,
Speaker 1: no pig Let us repeat that the humble radio or
Speaker 1: TV spot can deliver more listeners for less money than
Speaker 1: any other form of advertising. It is a way of
Speaker 1: having a big town meeting but letting sixty million people
Speaker 1: hear all the questions of answers. This technique is ideally
Speaker 1: suited to Eisenhower's warm personality as opposed to the cold
Speaker 1: intellectual approach of ADLEI. Stevenson. And because they are simple,
Speaker 1: because they are quick, because they are short and uncomplicated,
Speaker 1: the public will remember them like candy but heat, dirty hands,
Speaker 1: problem solved, vote Eisenhower. In other words, they will penetrate. Yes,
Speaker 1: they will penetrate the brains of sixty million critical voters,
Speaker 1: where the more complicated and more elaborate political speeches won't
Speaker 1: be remembered. And it's what the critical voters have in
Speaker 1: their brains when they go into the Poland booths to counts.
Speaker 1: But before he could get to voters brains, the eminem
Speaker 1: men first had to get General Eisenhower on board. Eisenhower
Speaker 1: was worried that these spots would be undignified. After all,
Speaker 1: at the time, Eisenhower was president of Columbia University. He
Speaker 1: wasn't as appalled as at least Stevenson would have been,
Speaker 1: but he was still worried. So Reeves met the General
Speaker 1: for lunch, probably over scotch, and wore him down. Well, General,
Speaker 1: do you think it's all right for candidate to make
Speaker 1: a thirty minute speech on television or radio? Yes? Or
Speaker 1: would it be dignified to make a fifteen minute speech? Yes?
Speaker 1: Would it be in order, perhaps to make a five
Speaker 1: five minutes speech? Yes, I am sure a five minutes
Speaker 1: speech would be an order if we could cut that
Speaker 1: speech to one minute? Is there anything wrong with that? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead, Or that's Reeves's account anyway. They filmed
Speaker 1: the campaign spots all in one day in Manhattan. The
Speaker 1: original idea was to run the spots in those targeted
Speaker 1: markets we now call them swing precincts. Eisenhower answers America
Speaker 1: in each spot, and everyday person asks the General a question.
Speaker 1: Reeves had Eisenhower's answers written on huge posters so Eisenhower
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to wear his glasses to read them. The
Speaker 1: story goes that Eisenhower worked through Reeves's scripts so fast
Speaker 1: that Reeves grabbed his typewriter and started to dash off
Speaker 1: news scripts spots on the spot, General, the Democrats are
Speaker 1: telling me I never had it so good? Can that
Speaker 1: be true? When America's billions in depth, when prices are doubled,
Speaker 1: When tech says, break our backs and we are still
Speaker 1: fighting in Korea? Is tragic, and it's time for a change.
Speaker 1: They filmed forty spots that day. A few days later,
Speaker 1: the crew grabbed some tourists from around Midtown to go
Speaker 1: on camera. The tourists were then prompted to ask the
Speaker 1: very questions Eisenhower had already answered. Then Reeves's producers stitched
Speaker 1: the spots together. They were the first television ads featuring
Speaker 1: an American presidential candidate. You know what things cost today?
Speaker 1: High prices are just driving me crazy. Yes, my mami
Speaker 1: gets after me about the high cost of living. It's
Speaker 1: another reason why I say is time for the change.
Speaker 1: Time to get back to an honest dollar and an
Speaker 1: honest dollars worth. At the filming, someone overheard Eisenhower say
Speaker 1: to think that an old soldier should come to this,
Speaker 1: but Rosser Reeves was delighted. Here was the unique selling
Speaker 1: proposition President. But wait, the Democrats had a new television
Speaker 1: strategy too. A man you can believe in ed La
Speaker 1: Stevenson would go on TV and read his speeches, speeches
Speaker 1: that were at the shortest, nearly a half an hour long,
Speaker 1: and when he went over that time, the networks would
Speaker 1: just cut him off mid sentence. The Stephenson campaign was
Speaker 1: bringing sticks to a knife fight. The tragedy of it
Speaker 1: all was that Stevenson had a lot of important things
Speaker 1: to say about the problems confronting the nation. Better we
Speaker 1: lose the election than mislead the people, and better we
Speaker 1: lose than misgovern the people. Help me to do the
Speaker 1: job in this autumn of conflict and of campaign. Help
Speaker 1: me to do the job in the years of darkness,
Speaker 1: of doubt and the prices which stretch beyond the horizon
Speaker 1: of to Night's happy vision. And we will justify our
Speaker 1: glorious passed and the loyalty of silent millions who looked
Speaker 1: us for a compaion, for understanding and for honor. Honest
Speaker 1: purpose was one of Stevenson's big themes. Treat people like citizens,
Speaker 1: don't treat us like idiots, like consumers who can be
Speaker 1: predicted and persuaded, but Stevenson wasn't any good at getting
Speaker 1: that message across on television. Democrats, desperate, did everything they could.
Speaker 1: They even got ahold of Rosseries' advertising plan, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to be top secret. It made Stevenson's campaign advisors
Speaker 1: steaming mad. They've invented a new kind of campaign, a
Speaker 1: campaign conceived not by men who want us to face
Speaker 1: the crucial issues of the day, but by the high
Speaker 1: powered hucksters of Madison Avenue. They've conceived not an election
Speaker 1: campaign in the usual sense, but a super colossal, multi
Speaker 1: million dollar production designed to sell an inadequate ticket to
Speaker 1: the American people in precisely the way they sell soap, toothpaste,
Speaker 1: hair tonic, or bubble gum or M and MS. Stevenson's
Speaker 1: campaign even asked the FCC to look into the legality
Speaker 1: of the Republican campaign ad spots. They figured, stuff's got
Speaker 1: to be illegal. Wasn't it an affront to everything a
Speaker 1: democracy stood for, faith in the voter to weigh the
Speaker 1: hard facts and make the call. But the FCC decided
Speaker 1: there was nothing to be done. In the end, Republicans
Speaker 1: spent one point five million dollars on television advertising in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, more than ten times what Democrats spent. Also,
Speaker 1: Stevenson never appeared in any of the Democrats ads. Amazingly,
Speaker 1: by election day, Stevenson was still a strong contender. He
Speaker 1: and Eisenhower were neck and neck, at least as the
Speaker 1: Poles had it. I've got those predictions on an old,
Speaker 1: yellowed punch card tacked to a bulletin board here in
Speaker 1: the Last Archive. Election Day nineteen fifty two began normally enough.
Speaker 1: It just didn't end that way. At seven fifteen that morning,
Speaker 1: Dwight Eisenhower's train pulled into Grand Central Station, just a
Speaker 1: few floors beneath the CBS News studio. Ike and Mimi
Speaker 1: travel to the Upper West Side to vote, and then
Speaker 1: they retired to their apartment. That evening, they'd go to
Speaker 1: the Commodore Hotel to wait for the results. Ad La E. Stevenson, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: was at the Governor's mansion in Illinois. I've talked before
Speaker 1: here on the Last Archive about the importance of historical imagination,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying, but I just can't picture Stevenson watching
Speaker 1: the returns on television. The rest of the country was watching, though,
Speaker 1: and a whole lot of them were watching CBS. This
Speaker 1: election had been all about television and advertising, and now
Speaker 1: the election coverage featured a first of its kind product
Speaker 1: placement for the computer, the UNIVAC. Like I've said that
Speaker 1: part was going badly. Have you got a prediction for us? Univac.
Speaker 1: I have to say I totally feel for Charles Collingwood.
Speaker 1: He's on live television. The fate of CBS News probably
Speaker 1: seemed to turn on how well the network would cover
Speaker 1: this election. They'd spent gazillions on this insane production and
Speaker 1: it's a dud. Univac, our fabulous mathematical brain is down
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia mulling over the returns that we've sent him
Speaker 1: so far. He's sitting there in his partner humming away.
Speaker 1: A few minutes ago, I asked him what his prediction was,
Speaker 1: and he sent me back a very caustic answer for
Speaker 1: a machine. He said that if we continue to be
Speaker 1: so late in sending him the result, it's going to
Speaker 1: take him a few minutes to find out just what
Speaker 1: the prediction is going to be. So he's not ready
Speaker 1: yet with his prediction, but we're going to go to
Speaker 1: him in just a little while. Univac be damned. The
Speaker 1: Eisenhower campaign was getting its own results by phone over
Speaker 1: at the Commodore Hotel. Her confident Eisenhower was getting ready
Speaker 1: to celebrate. CBS, though still didn't want to call the race.
Speaker 1: And as I was saying that, as a great believer
Speaker 1: in the machine, we're having a little bit of trouble
Speaker 1: with univax. It seems that he's rebelling against the human element.
Speaker 1: About ten thirty, CBS finally got a prediction from the machine. Yes,
Speaker 1: Junivax finally come through. Good, give it to us, hump,
Speaker 1: We've got Stephens twenty stay, Eisenhour at twenty eighth Stay.
Speaker 1: That adds up to an electoral vote for Stephenson of
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventeen for Eisenhower at three hundred and fourteen.
Speaker 1: A prediction at last, but not an outcome that just
Speaker 1: about anyone watching closely couldn't have predicted by that time
Speaker 1: of the night. And then half an hour before midnight,
Speaker 1: Univax seemed to go entirely off the rails. It predicted
Speaker 1: that while Eisenhower would win the electoral vote, Stevenson would
Speaker 1: win the popular vote. No human was predicting anything like that,
Speaker 1: not even Walter Cronkite Charlie very interesting. Indeed, on that
Speaker 1: UNIVAC prediction, we who are on way human and I
Speaker 1: have to operate with the flash and blood instead of
Speaker 1: with electronic gadgets. I still think this thing looks like
Speaker 1: it's pretty much on the Eisenhower side at the moment.
Speaker 1: I know it seems as though UNIVAC was a complete
Speaker 1: disaster on election night nineteen fifty two. But it turned
Speaker 1: out that really in the night, UNIVEK had predicted an
Speaker 1: Eisenhower landslide. The computer minute remington Ran, thinking the election
Speaker 1: was neck and neck and fraid of the machine making
Speaker 1: mistake on live television, just hadn't passed that prediction onto CBS.
Speaker 1: Remington RAN's entire interest in collaborating the CBS had been
Speaker 1: to demonstrate the usefulness of a general purpose digital computer
Speaker 1: what if it failed? Disaster? So the UNIVX people, after
Speaker 1: suppressing that early prediction of an Eisenhower landslide, had gotten
Speaker 1: desperate and had tinkered with the data to see if
Speaker 1: they could get the machine to make a prediction that
Speaker 1: didn't seem nuts. The dancers are to one in favor
Speaker 1: of General Eisenhower. I might note that UNIVAK is running
Speaker 1: a few moments behind ad Morrow. However, just before midnight,
Speaker 1: after veterans, CBS reporter Edward R. Morrow called the election
Speaker 1: for Eisenhower, CBS had finally announced that early Univak prediction.
Speaker 1: To viewers at home, it looked like the Univik was
Speaker 1: the slowest of all predictors. Remington Rand had some explaining
Speaker 1: to do. Well, we had a lot of troubles tonight.
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, they were all human and not the machine.
Speaker 1: Remington Rand guy tried desperately to explain what had gone wrong.
Speaker 1: The problem, he insisted, had never been with the Univac.
Speaker 1: That we should have had nerve enough to believe the
Speaker 1: machine in the first place. It was right, we were wrong.
Speaker 1: Fifteen minutes later, an aide to at LEA. Stevenson told
Speaker 1: reporters that the candidate was conceding. He'd lost to the
Speaker 1: guy with the thirty second TV ADS in a vote
Speaker 1: predicted by a TV gimmick the supercomputer UNIVAC. Stevenson, after
Speaker 1: delivering the concession speech, headed back to the governor's mansion,
Speaker 1: where guests had gathered. One of them tried to boost
Speaker 1: his spirits, told him that he'd educated the country. Stevenson
Speaker 1: supposedly said glumly that the American people had flunked his course.
Speaker 1: He'd wanted his campaign to show that truth can win.
Speaker 1: He wanted to demonstrate that you could run for president
Speaker 1: and win the White House by talking honestly about actual
Speaker 1: issues in all their complexity, not by making thirty second
Speaker 1: ad spots that turned politics into M and m's. But
Speaker 1: truth didn't win, and the American people failed Professor Stephenson's exam, which,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, was a lousy way to
Speaker 1: run a campaign. No wonder he lost, but so did
Speaker 1: the country. Nineteen fifty two set a new course for
Speaker 1: the United States and for American politics the way every
Speaker 1: election does, by changing our president. But it also changed
Speaker 1: how we elect a president, and it even changed how
Speaker 1: we know things. The day after the election, Edward R.
Speaker 1: Murrow talked about voters the way Americans like to think
Speaker 1: of themselves, self determining and unknowable. To me, the most
Speaker 1: impressive thing about tonight is again the demonstration that the
Speaker 1: people of this country are sovereign, that they are unpredictable,
Speaker 1: and that somehow in a faction that is as mysterious
Speaker 1: to pollsters as it is to reporters. The great normal
Speaker 1: majority in this country made up its mind as to
Speaker 1: the man it wanted to meet. It. Maybe pollsters and
Speaker 1: advertising agencies and computers can predict how voters behave. Maybe
Speaker 1: they can change how voters behave. But should they? What
Speaker 1: if the very accuracy of those predictions means that citizens
Speaker 1: lose faith in the evidence what they see with their
Speaker 1: own eyes, lose faith in the political process. What if
Speaker 1: they really take to heart the idea behind the well
Speaker 1: targeted ad campaign and the computerized prediction and conclude that
Speaker 1: we behave as predictable consumers, not as individual citizens. Four
Speaker 1: years later, during the election of nineteen fifty six, at
Speaker 1: LEAs Stevenson took on Eisenhower again, and this time he
Speaker 1: too appeared in commercials. It's wonderful. I was sitting right
Speaker 1: here in my own library. Thanks to television, I can
Speaker 1: talk to millions of people that I couldn't reach any
Speaker 1: other way. They were TV commercials, but really they were
Speaker 1: anti TV commercials. I can talk to you, yes, but
Speaker 1: I can't listen to you. I can't hear about your problems,
Speaker 1: about your hopes and your affairs. To do that, I've
Speaker 1: got to go out and see you in person. And
Speaker 1: that's what I've been doing. So finally, I hope that
Speaker 1: the next time we meet it will be person to
Speaker 1: person and face to face. Stevenson wanted you to know
Speaker 1: it was all props, all fake TV ads were just
Speaker 1: as fake as dummy computers with Christmas lights. But it
Speaker 1: was no use, and it was too late. Citizens had
Speaker 1: become consumers shopping for the best deal. Politics had become
Speaker 1: just another con the hard sell, face to face, fat chance.
Speaker 1: Campaigns would get glossier and glitzier. Elections would be predicted
Speaker 1: by faster and faster computers. In nineteen fifty six, President
Speaker 1: Eisenhower had new ads to lower taxes, wier taxes, record employment, unemployment,
Speaker 1: piece highest wages, lower pay, late write, centralization of government.
Speaker 1: Whoa stop. I've tried. I'd listened to everybody on TV
Speaker 1: and radio. I've read the papers and magazine. I've tried,
Speaker 1: but I'm still confused. Who's right, What's right? What should
Speaker 1: I believe? What are the facts? How can I tell?
Speaker 1: Voters became irritated and impatient, looking for the quick fix.
Speaker 1: Eisenhower answers America the easy answer, What are the facts?
Speaker 1: When politics becomes big business? The facts of the matter
Speaker 1: become harder and harder to tell, especially outside of the
Speaker 1: Last Archive. The Last Archive is produced by Sophie Crane
Speaker 1: mcabbon and Bennette of Faffrey. Our editor is Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Jason Gambrell and
Speaker 1: Martin Gonzalez are our engineers. Fact checking by Amy Gaines.
Speaker 1: Original music by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Simponette.
Speaker 1: Many of our sound effects are from Harry Jeannette Junior
Speaker 1: and the Star Jenette Foundation. Our full proof players are Barlow, Adamson,
Speaker 1: Daniel Burger, Jones, Jesse Henson, John Kuntz, Becca A. Lewis In,
Speaker 1: Maurice Emmanuel Parent. The Last Archive is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to Ryan McKittrick in the
Speaker 1: American Repertory Theater, to Alex Allenson and the Bridge Sound
Speaker 1: in stage, to Simon Leek and to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Speaker 1: Footage provided by Veritone at Pushkin thanks to Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, Carl Migliori, Emily Rostick, Maggie Taylor, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: Our research assistants are Michelle Gaw, Olivia Oldham, Henrietta Riley,
Speaker 1: Oliver Riskin Cuts and Emily Spector. I'm Jill Lapoor.