From the course: Universal Principles of Design
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Shaping
- [Instructor] Hi, I'm Jill Butler and this is the Universal Principles of Design. And this movie, Shaping. Or How to Teach a New Robot Old Tricks. During the early part of World War II, dropping bombs from airplanes was extremely inaccurate. Electronic guidance systems had not yet been invented. And so they way they compensated was to drop a lot of bombs. Which meant a lot of missed targets and a lot of collateral damage. Enter behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner. Skinner basically invented the technology of behavior modification. And he had an idea how he could help the United States and its allies drop more accurate bombs, pigeons. Well, pigeon bombs to be precise. Project Pigeon as it was called was a classified, research and development program during World War II that explored using trained pigeons to increase the accuracy of bombs and to decrease civilian casualties. The program involved four major steps. Number one, pigeons were trained to peck at specific targets on aerial…
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