“Eisenhower spent the next eight years in office. But in terms of influence over culture, the computer was arguably the night’s biggest winner.”
– Artist and
Forbes critic-at-large
Jonathon Keats, revisiting the moment when
UNIVAC I, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, correctly predicted the outcome of the 1952 U.S. presidential election. Assuming the mainframe must be hallucinating Eisenhower’s landslide victory, the programmers underreported UNIVAC’s findings. “When the machine was vindicated—missing the final tally by just four electoral votes—the UNIVAC’s operators confessed their lies.”
