home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=92TT0759>
- <title>
- Apr. 06, 1992: View Points:Television
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Apr. 06, 1992 The Real Power of Vitamins
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 69
- TELEVISION
- Machines That Think
- </hdr><body>
- <p> When CBS hired a newly minted Univac to analyze the vote in
- the 1952 presidential election, network officials thought it a
- nifty publicity stunt. But when the printout appeared, an
- embarrassed Charles Collingwood reported that the machine couldn't
- make up its mind. It was not until after midnight that CBS
- confessed the truth: Univac had correctly predicted Dwight
- Eisenhower would swamp Adlai Stevenson in one of the biggest
- landslides in history, but nobody believed it. It is a defining
- moment in The Machine That Changed the World, a surprisingly
- satisfying five-part history of the computer that starts April 6
- on PBS. Crafted from old footage and fresh reportage by a team of
- veteran Nova and BBC hands, it is less a chronicle of hardware
- than a loving exploration of the sometimes rocky relationship
- between the first mindlike machines and the people who created
- them. Heady data for a generation that tends to take its Macs
- and PCs for granted.
- </p>
- <p>By Philip Elmer-De Witt.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-