After a long winter of channel surfing, The Rake took heed of the growing evening light and resolved to check out some of the local culture that those freezing nights had held at bay. The other night, we trekked down to a new local favorite, the Mill City Museum, where a lecture was underway by Gail Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. The subject? How the Washburn A Mill was used during the forties to develop weapons of war.
According to Dr. Peterson, in 1943 Betty Crocker wasn’t the only one cooking up ideas at the flour mill, now the ruin that so romantically embraces the museum. In a shed atop the twelve-story building, a team of scientists was conducting top-secret experiments.
Their project quietly proceeded behind the two-story-tall neon sign that happily beamed the word “Eventually,” General Mills’ motto at the time. Was it exploding flour? Nerve-agent pancake mix? Not quite. It was nothing less than the development of the first “smart bomb.” These were the early days of long-range rocketry. Hitler was ahead in this arms race, maybe months away from being able to bomb any city on the planet. The U.S. War Department responded with zeal, developing a rocket propulsion system dubbed the “Pelican.” Still, a confounding hurdle confronted them: How to guide that rocket over hundreds of miles to find its target.
Enter B.F. Skinner. Yes, that B.F. Skinner, the famous researcher and theorist who wrote an entirely new branch into the lexicon of psychology known as Applied Behavior Analysis. Most people remember Skinner for his experiments on “shaping,” a method of modifying behavior—be it human or animal—using certain enticements and reinforcements. By 1936, Skinner was well on his Behaviorist path when he received his first professorship at the University of Minnesota. Over the next few years, he had rats performing a circus of elaborate functions, all for the promise of a few pellets of kibble.
When World War II broke out, Skinner decided to lend his skills to the cause, and began experimenting with the unique abilities of pigeons to recognize distant targets. The government asked General Mills to help fund Skinner’s “Project Pigeon.” (This may seem odd, but local industry jumped to help the cause in any way it could. A small Minneapolis thermostat manufacturer created the first autopilots for B-52s at about the same time; that company was later known as Honeywell.) By 1943, Skinner and a team of graduate students crossed the river to become employees of General Mills, riding a treacherous conveyor belt to the top of the building and setting up shop on the roof. Pigeons were plentiful and their experiments showed slow, but promising results. Pigeon “pilots” were trained to recognize a photo image of a distant target and, with slight movements of their heads, guide their missiles to destiny. The Pelican rocket was fitted for three valiant pilots. Unfortunately, while Project Pigeon was proving that birds could fly bombs, another secret project, this one called Manhattan, was proving that an atom could be split with a remarkable outcome. The rest is the birdseed of history.
Things weren’t over for Skinner, however. During his experiments, the professor made the important discovery that by interacting with his subject—leading it, rather than waiting for the birdbrain to do most of the figuring—he could guide behavior with remarkable speed and accuracy. It would become fundamental to shaping methodology. and revolutionized fields such as physical therapy to recover lost motor function, and the education of autistic children. Then again, maybe Skinner was merely putting words to an ancient technique. Willful spouses have been shaping our behavior for centuries. Come to think of it, what did rouse me from the couch to hear a lecture on Skinnerian psychology in an industrial museum?—Jon Zurn