Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

SAGE was the biggest computer system of the time: Operators fed punch cards coded with the planned air routes of the day’s flights into the giant computers, and if radar hit on something that didn’t match up, operators could deploy missiles or aircraft to intercept what they had to assume was a Soviet nuclear bomber. SAGE stations had computers that connected across the country by modem and telephone line, a first. The system was a PR coup for IBM, which produced a 12-minute advertising video called “On Guard! The Story of SAGE,” a truly exceptional piece of Cold War propaganda, complete with Mom and Dad standing watch over their sleeping daughter: the parental dyad, a SAGE system of the home.xx According to SAGE engineer Lester Earnest, it also didn’t work—at all.xxi No one claims America ever used SAGE in action, but Earnest maintains that we never could have. He compares the system to Forrest Gump: “It was very fast, financially successful, and incredibly stupid.”65 For one thing, SAGE couldn’t handle radar countermeasures, which the Soviets were already using. For another, ICBMs replaced bombers as the go-to nuclear delivery device, and those went above radar into space. At best SAGE was a glorified air-traffic control system; at worst it connected nuclear missiles to buggy code and unsecured phone lines.xxii