SAGE

“[SAGE] worked to build a computer industry. It worked to justify air defense. It transformed the Air Force into a high-technology force. And maybe socially most important, it created what became a very long-standing belief that there was a technological solution to the problem of nuclear war.”

“SAGE taught the American computer industry how to design and build large, interconnected, real-time data processing systems.”

“The system even had the reliability that the Air Force wanted. We’d solved that problem by having [the computers] work in tandem, taking turns. One machine would juggle the radar while its twin was being serviced or standing by. By that method the average SAGE center was able to stay on alert over 97 percent of the time.”

“SAGE was celebrated as one of the great technical achievements of its day. But although the system worked fine, the arms race made it obsolete before it was even finished. It could guard against attacks by bombers, but not missiles, so...SAGE became passe.”

In 1963, Jim Juntunen was a new lieutenant posted at the Adair Air Force SAGE station near Corvallis, Oregon. Now 69, he remembers, “We had a saying out there,” he recalled. “The saying was, 'This job consists of hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.'”