UNIVAC called the 1952 election early — CBS aired a fudged number instead
dreamwieber · x · 2026-11-04
A clip from BBC's The Dream Machine revisits a classic moment in computing history: in 1952, the UNIVAC computer correctly predicted Eisenhower's landslide presidential win hours ahead of the official count. The margin looked so implausible versus the polls that CBS aired an artificially adjusted figure on air instead of the machine's actual output — widely regarded as the first public demonstration of computer prediction.
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