Computer History Museum - Lectures - Vigilance and Vacuum Tubes: The SAGE System, 1956-63

Bay Area Computer History Perspectives and Computer History Museum present:
Vigilance and Vacuum Tubes: The SAGE System, 1956-63


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5:30 - 7:00 PM
Tuesday, May 19, 1998 Computer History Museum Building 126 Moffett Field Mountain View, CA 94035
Directions Attending? Click here. Event Transcript

VIGILANCE AND VACUUM TUBES: THE SAGE SYSTEM, 1956-1963.
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 within 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. More photos.



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) FINGER program!


James Wong: Computer Systems Engineer, Burroughs Corporation; Unisys Corporation; Project Engineer on SAGE system software for The RAND Corporation 1955-1958; 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 a tutor in Mathematics and Computers with the Learning Disabled Program at Foothill College.

"'Everything was first done on SAGE' were familar words throughout the industry. SAGE was the first large-scale information processing system with capabilities so advanced that forty years later they would still be considered state of the art. The hardware is better and faster today but multiprogramming, distributed processing, on-line data management, timesharing were all there in SAGE."



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.

"What makes SAGE such an interesting case is its origins within the academic science and engineering community--not with military imperatives, though its military funding sources and key geopolitical events spurred it on. Instead, the initiative lay with scientists and engineers, who developed not only machines but a vision and a language of automated command and control. But the construction of SAGE also boosted the redesign and reorientation of an extremely traditional institution--the armed forces--around an essentially technological concept of centralized command. Seen in this light, SAGE was far more than a weapons system. It was a dream, a myth, a metaphor for total defense, a technology of closed-world discourse."

For a sample chapter, click here. Copies of the book will be available at the talk.

These talks are sponsored by

Computer History Museum

and

Sun Microsystems



Directions:

From Highway 101 in Mountain View, take the Moffett Field exit (ignore any exits for Moffett Blvd.). You will come immediately up to the Moffett Field main gate. When stopped, kindly inform the guard
that you are attending the Computer history talk.

If requested, you may be required to
park to the right side of the gate,
in the visitor's parking area, and go
into the Visitor Badging office
to get your reserved badge
and further directions.

Need a map of Moffett Field? Click here.



***NOTE***
ADVANCE CONFIRMATION IS REQUIRED for entry to Moffett Field.
If you plan to attend, please respond via e-mail. You may also
RSVP by voice
by calling Cynthia at 650.604.2579

Please indicate if you are a
US citizen and bring a Driver's License for identification.

If not a US citizen, do you have a green card?
If so, please indicate the country you are from in your RSVP
and please bring your green card with you to Moffett Field.


If you do not have a green card, please click here.

*****

For more SAGE images, click here