Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

Semi-Automatic Ground Environment ( SAGE ) was the first computerized air defense system of the North American Space Defense Command NORAD. It was tested for the first time in 1952. SAGE should identify, track and intercept the Soviet long-range bombers. When it finally was fully operational in 1963, but the threat had already been overshadowed by bombers of the by ICBMs. However, for this SAGE was entirely inadequate. Nevertheless, the project had significant influence on the development of computer systems in the area of ​​real-time processing of information and networking through modems.

The direction of the development of SAGE was one of the builders of the Whirlwind Robert Everett, who was in this capacity technical director of the Mitre Corporation. The contract to build a tube based on the Whirlwind computer project developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first received the Radio Corporation of America. Later, however, he went to IBM, which began with the construction of the computer 1958.

The AN/FSQ-7 ( Whirlwind II) - tube computer consisted of 55,000 vacuum tubes and had a ferrite core memory. With a weight of 275 tons, he finished an area of ​​over 2000 square meters and had a power consumption of up to 3 megawatts. Thus, the supercomputer of its spatial dimensions was greater than any other computer system. Up to the present no such space demanding more system was built. He collected data from the connected monitoring stations in real time, enabling operators to easily select the targets to be controlled. For this purpose, the system was also provided to the state of interceptors of all airports in the area as well as the Bomarc and Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missiles.

Since the operators were not computer specialists but ordinary soldiers, the first time a complex human-computer interface was developed. It originated screen systems for text and graphics and the light pen as an input device for graphical data.

Once a target seemed interesting and the operator decided to intercept it, news of Telegraph to the local managers were sent automatically.

The SAGE air defense until 1979 in operation and then by newer systems, and later airborne surveillance systems ( AWACS ), superseded. The last computer was shut down in 1983 and is now in the Computer Museum in Boston. The U.S. claimed the SAGE system around eight billion U.S. dollars.