back ago they used commonsense and knew which button to press would lead to which action. today, it's like, you need to see "warning: coffee is hot" on a teacup. and it was just 50 years ago!
Silver Spoon I do believe a common error almost ended the world a couple of times during those times... not to mention people getting excited about spaghetti trees on the BBC. Then again, all older people call younger ones dumb. I did it today and got sad.
@@user-1billlon do your research or come up with a more cogent and informed response. IBM is American. Lenovo is headquartered in Beijing, God bless them.
SAGE was inputted with the data of all known commercial flights. The purpose is to filter commercial flights from the view. All of the radar blips in SAGE were tracked manually by eyes and hands. Basically a team of radarmen observed the radar screens, checking any possible aircraft flight, and then input it into the SAGE system, to be processed. Afterward, the SAGE system give the SAGE operator the filtered out view of the world. From there, the SAGE operator track any UFO the SAGE system showed to him. An offshot of SAGE is SABRE, that handled the booking and arrangement of seatings for commercial flights. The name "SABRE" itself probably an unused codename for SAGE. Then there's the MAGI Super Computer system, inspired by SAGE, with 3 of its cores named after the 3 sages / wise men. It was also built by a MIT, one of the nodes is even at MIT.
@CoolConejo Many people don't understand how amazing this was, not only for the technology but for managing to perform such complex tasks with limited machinery. The computers were far less powerful, far slower, yet the technology that combined them with radar was amazing.
Yes indeed, SAGE (and the computer system that was it's nerve center, the AN/FSQ-7, pictured at 0:40) was quite a ground-breaking computer system for its time, and introduced several then-new concepts for computing such as networking via phone modem, an interactive user interface, graphical displays (each SAGE terminal used a Charactron CRT). Jingoistic warmongering purposes or not, the SAGE system definitely brought quite a few new technologies of computing to the table..
I was a maintenance man on the SAGE computer system for 7 years. Most fun I ever had in the military. I have a sheet of the system's "core" memory in my office.
@yakacm No. No one ever built an explicit Turing machine until modern times when it became feasible for interested hobbyists, artists, and others to make them as novelties. The Turing Machine is an idea used to inquire about what is possible with computer systems.
IBM (International Business Machines), controlling an IBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile). That system is amazing considering how early it was, especially when you think that they went from the first complete Turing machine to this in a bout 10 years.
That "gun" was one of the first, if not the first, pointing device used with a computer. Also, not mentioned here was the chain of radar stations across Canada. The first was called the PInetree line, followed later by the Mid Canada and DEW lines. I used to work for a Canadian telecom and back in the mid 70s would come across some SAGE circuits. My work would also take me into the radar sites and there was one site, in Armstrong Ontario (about 150 north east of Thunder Bay), that was shut down shortly before my first visit there. Later on, someone converted that site to a "hotel" and I'd stay in the former officers quarters. The officers mess became a restaurant and bar. On one trip there, I borrowed a motorcycle and rode around the remains of the radar station. Bottom line, SAGE drove a lot of advances in computers and telecom.
My father worked the Sage block house at Stewart AFB in Newburgh, NY from 64-70 as FAA liaison,to NORAD, when it was closed along with the base. We transfered to another Sage facility at Ft Lee, Va. They closed it in1981(just the NORAD facility). Ft Lee Army post is booming. A whole floor of mainframe antiques are still there I believe. Too bad they closed so many facilities after the cold war, would have helped on 9/11 though radars were looking outward..
The one in Syracuse maybe but by 2001 modern air traffic control was doing its thing. If you listen to radio transmission from the day between ATC, pilots, and NORAD its hair raising
One large cabinet ("256^2") of core was 65,535 x 36 bits, and a small cabinet ("64^2") was 4,096 x 36. RAMAC 305 was ~5Mbytes, and there were drums everywhere.
@bummwummn This system wouldn't have done a thing for 9/11, mainly because there was no precedent to using a commercial aircraft as a weapon...unless, of course, we had a policy to shoot down any aircraft that went off-course. Naturally, such a policy would be totally insane.
@@sirfred2678 I never used punch cards for BASIC, but used pencil mark cards in my grade 12 FORTRAN class. In my work, the punch cards were used in a system for keeping track of railroad freight cars.
@@James_Knott In your punch card times we probably still had ODRA times still, because of comunism/socialism here in Poland until 1989, so we were behind "iron curtain" and West COCOM embargo didn't allow East Europe countries to use more advanced technologies like ATARI 65XE/C64 or ATARI STE/AMIGA :) We've just had no such computers here almost nowhere by nobody due to the restrictions and astronomical prices for most of us anyway :) So, BASIC was the first and the most common language we've learned here in PL in 90's, cheers! :)
@tumsabal1 The RAMAC hard drive was 5 MB and it weighed a ton. Enough storage for a short MP3. Now, 50 years later, you can buy a USB PC terabyte backup drive for $120 plus tax.
FFAA has a similar protocol derived from an organization called NORAD which would autorize a jet fighter intercept and take down a potentially dangerous unauthorized aircraft if it was to penetrate a restricted zone. Somehow that protocol was uneffective on 911.
1:50 "with electronic control, the computer automatically adjusts the missile to meet any change in the target flight. There is NO escape." -- ok, how does this happen? Does this mean the ground computer sends position updates to the missile via some kind of radio channel, and if so how was that secured to avoid people using their best hacks to send the missile anywhere they want? Or did the missile have its own target lock somehow that could track movement? How?
Probably a radar guided missile: The computer point a radar beam to the target and the missile make adjustments to stay within the beam. Back in the '60 here in Italy we had a similar system but in a much smaller scale.
I expect same as the ICBMs, computer sends course correction data via radio link. Not so much trouble from haxx in those days, though it would have been secured by some coded means.
@lexvalesa I'm sorry, I can't really follow what you're trying to say. There was never any standing policy to shoot down commercial aircraft that deviated from their flight plan.
+DelilahThePig its on the screen, there were punchcards with the bits already set on them which they could switch on the fly if needed. Its more like a digital slide per se
As Justin says, they could switch out punchcards to display different geographical regions, but in effect it was an early form of graphics processing. SAGE was an extremely impressive technical accomplishment for the late 1950s.
It was a vector graphics system. The computer used an electron beam, guided by X-Y electromagnets to directly trace (draw) the graphic onto the phosphors of the screen. This is in contrast to raster scanning (used in TVs through the 1990's), where each line was scanned in a repetitive back & forth pattern.
@mnlwrnr Certainly one of the first or The first real time computer with a User interface, There is a picture from 1949/1950 of a primitive light pen so the concept had been around for quite some time. Goto Wikapedia and type in Whirlwind computer. You'll be able to read a fasinating history.
After its military service, the SAGE components went to Hollywood where it appeared in the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Lost in Space and recently, Lost. Could SAGE be the machine that inspired the novel and then the movie Fail Safe? (THAT computer could look into Russia! Not sure that was ever possible, at least not as shown.)
I guess you haven't paid attention to the news. Occasionally a Russian bomber is tracked to close to our air space. They built the bombers but didn't get around to using them.
Almost three minutes for a commercial! The longest I remember is one minute. (All commercials were one minute long when I was little.) In high school we always used punch cards. But no monitors. (We were depraved. No, make that deprived.)
I’m sorry but it isn’t. My Dad was one of the 7,000 engineers at IBM that worked on SAGE. The SAGE system ran in vacuum tubes, like radios and TV sets did at the time. We no longer use vacuum tubes in electronics and the SAGE was disassembled and used for sci-Fi movie props.
I'm not sure if I completely agree with that, inventions are usually inspired by a need or a necessity, and during a war many needs become more pressing because of desperation. But for every useful innovation during a war, like a computer came many useless or impractical ones, like floating tanks and those rocket powered wheels that were intended to clear barbed wire. They all sounded good in theory but when put into use they either didn't do what they were intended or were dangerous.
The SAGE did not shoot down missiles; this was exactly its problem. It was built to track aircraft, but by the time it was entered into service, inter-continental ballistic missiles had arrived which travel far too fast for SAGE to track.
It was the 1950's in America. They could do whatever they wanted so long as "It was Communists". Surely, you know about McCarthyism and how it affected the politics of the time.
To be honest, it is sufficiently amazing despite the technological means of today's world would to be even much more incredible and amazing... At least to myself in Brasil... What a strange old American missile Beaumarc! It resembles a jet plane.
It is vitally crucial to know everything that's flying over your nation's skies when the Russians have thousands of missiles on stand by ready to fire at you. If there is a missile you are equipped, able and ready to shoot it down because of IBM's SAGE Mainframe Computer.
Carl Sagan once said (I don't know the exact quote) that we live in a world of amazing scientific discoveries and technological advancements, yet a majority of people don't know shit about science and technology
1:07 Does he just tried to shot the aircraft with an early NES Zapper ? 2:34 Look at the right of "fire" : "RIP ON", WTF ? "RIP MODE ON, I hope the bomber's pilots will rest in peace" ? 2:25 This fat ass screen looks as good as the Houston Control Center's one.
