During World War II when survival was at stake, B.F. Skinner came up with a project so bizarre that it sounded like something from a cartoon. It wasn’t about making bigger bombs or more powerful planes. It was more about using unexpected weapons, such as pigeonsand pictures.
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Skinner had the idea to train pigeons as missile guides. The project was later renamed Project Orcon. Skinner thought that pigeons could provide a solution to the dangers of traditional bombsights. They have excellent vision and are able to maneuver.
The project was not just a wild guess. Skinner is famous for his operant conditioning work (more about that later). He created a system in which pigeons could view a projected target image on a screen within the missile’s nose cone. The pigeons pecked at the image of the target, steering the missile with a mechanism which translated their pecks to control movements.
The tests were promising, despite the fact that it sounds like a joke. The natural pecking ability of pigeons could be trained and guided with surprising accuracy. The project was not without its challenges. The project faced challenges. Project Pigeon had to be abandoned in favor of technologies that were more easily deployable.