Vigilance and Vacuum Tubes: The Sage System, 1956-1963

Recorded: Tuesday, May 19, 1998
Posted: Aug 27, 2013
Location: The Computer Museum History Center, Building 126, Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA

In 1963, the last of 22 SAGE command centers was completed by contractors IBM, Western Electric, The RAND Corporation, and Burroughs. At a cost of $8 billion (1964 dollars), this vastly complex technological system, an outgrowth of MIT Lincoln Labs' Whirlwind II computer, represented the state of the art in strategic doctrine and computer systems design. Each one of the 22 SAGE command centers used over 49,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 250 tons, and consumed 3,000,000 watts of power.

The SAGE system linked these command centers into a technopolitical "shield" against Soviet strategic bomber attack. From a stark social context of high Cold War tensions emerged impressive technical advances in hardware and software systems design, real-time control, and air traffic monitoring.

Advances such as the light gun, modems, duplex CPUs, multiprocessing, A/D and D/A conversion techniques, as well as networking arose as ancillary technologies of SAGE development. But did SAGE really work as advertised? Should we care? This lecture reflects on these questions, SAGE's context, and its technical spinoffs.

The lecture takes place in front of 400 square feet of actual SAGE hardware, including Weapons Director and Intercept Technician consoles! This equipment is from the last functioning SAGE center in North Bay, Ontario (Canada), decommissioned in 1982. The USAF SAGE Film "In Your Defense" will also be shown. "I like Ike" buttons optional.

The Speakers:
This lecture's speakers represent a variety of perspectives, from the history of technology, to hardware and software systems engineering:

Les Earnest: Senior Research Scientist Emeritus, Stanford University, Project Engineer and System Designer, SAGE system hardware. Founding President, Imagen Corporation; former Associate Chairman, Stanford University Computer Science Department; Executive Officer, Stanford AI Lab; Department Head, Information Systems Dept, MITRE Corporation; Member, Technical Staff, MIT Lincoln Laboratory... and inventor of the original (DEC-10/20) FINGER program!

James Wong: Computer Systems Engineer, Burroughs Corporation; Unisys Corporation; Project Engineer on SAGE system software for The RAND Corporation 1955-1963; Team Leader, System Development Corporation (SDC), Lincoln Laboratory, SAGE and Project "465-L." Mathematician and programmer for the IBM CPC, 701, and RAND Johnniac. Wong is retired and currently volunteers as an instructor in Mathematics with the Learning Disabled Program at Foothill College.

Paul Edwards: Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer, Program in Science, Technology & Society, Stanford University; author of "The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America." Edwards has also authored dozens of articles on the history of computing and has held visiting professorships at Stanford, Cornell, the University of Michigan and UC - Santa Cruz. His next book is entitled: "The World in a Machine: Computer Models, Data Networks, and Global Atmospheric Politics." Edwards will be making a 30-minute presentation.

This talk was sponsored by The Computer Museum History Center and Sun Microsystems.