Interactions - September/October 2010

IBM System 360, the most successful mainframe computer in history, with more than $100 billion in sales, was a major beneficiary of SAGE. So too was the MIT TX2, the precursor to Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP- 10, the first truly successful computer for artificial intelligence research.

Project SAGE led to broader development of the computing field and new applications of information technology. SAGE was the direct precursor to the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, BMEWS. It also created modern air-traffic control; in fact, for many years ATC terminals looked exactly like SAGE terminals. Tracking for manned space vehicles was built on knowledge gained from SAGE. The Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment, or SABRE, came from SAGE and was used to create one of the first successful computerized airline-reservation systems. The System Development Corporation and IBM Corporation, working on Project SAGE, arguably invented the profession of computer programming. And the entire constellation of high-tech defense programs, including Project SAGE, proved to be an incubator of systems management and the concept of human organizations as systems that profoundly affected engineering and management education for decades.

Project SAGE touched thousands of people who shaped the future of U.S. information technology. One of these was Vinton Cerf, a co-creator of the Internet, whose first experience with computers was in 1958 at a Project SAGE facility at the System Development Corporation in Santa Monica. He was fascinated by the experience, took all the computer science courses he could find in college, and then began his career at IBM. Project SAGE proved beyond doubt that it is possible to build very large, integrated systems linking geographically remote (including offshore) sites with real-time computation to maintain 24/7 engagement with a highly complicated task. This proof was instrumental in many areas of large-scale socio-technical endeavor, not the least of which was the U.S. Space Program that successfully landed a human on the moon within a decade of President John F. Kennedy’s famous challenge of May 1961. Project SAGE never received the fame of the space program. The program was kept quiet, and most citizens living near the Sector Direction Centers never knew what they were. Project SAGE was phased out in 1983, made obsolete by other technologies and strategic strategies. It disappeared without a whimper.

Many lessons can be drawn from Project SAGE, but three stand out. One is that enough smart people and enough resources can make remarkable things happen—the old adage that you cannot solve anything by throwing money at it simply is not true. It is difficult to tell whether the Cold War would have turned out any differently without Project SAGE, but the Computer Age of the U.S. would almost certainly have been different—and less spectacular—without Project SAGE. Another is that bold initiatives draw naysayers who, for reasons that seem perfectly sensible at the time, doubt that anything good will come from such initiatives. In the late 1950s, computers were for calculation. Who better to ask for an opinion than mathematicians? Distinguished mathematicians reviewing the proposal said Valley and Forrester were not sufficiently sophisticated in mathematics to create such a complicated system. Fortunately, risk-takers won the day, but only because confidence in peer review was relaxed in the face of pressing national need. Finally, the “multiplier” effect of Moore’s Law had a profound effect on the consequences of Project SAGE. Gordon Moore described the law in 1965, well after SAGE was launched. Few could imagine in 1950 that a revolution in materials, design, and manufacturing would produce a multidecade era of increasingly powerful and inexpensive computers that were far more versatile and reliable than Whirlwind. Project SAGE advanced technical aspects of computer-building, but perhaps the greatest effect of the project was to show that large-scale, computer-assisted systems could be built and operated successfully as essential infrastructure. When SAGE went live in the early 1960s, this was unknown; when SAGE was finally shut down in the early 1980s, that knowledge was commonplace. Project SAGE constructed a new reality.

Recommended Reading

Edwards, P. N. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

Green, T. Bright Boys. Natick, Massachusetts: A K Peters Ltd., 2010.

Hughes, T. Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects that Changed the Modern World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

MITRE Corporation; http://www.mitre.org/ about/ sage.html/ Moore, G. E. “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits.” Electronics, April 19, 1965, 114–117.

Wikipedia; http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Semi_Automatic_ Ground_Environment/ You Tube; “SAGE - Semi Automatic Ground Environment ; Parts 1 and 2” http://www. youtube.com/watch?v =vzf88oM9egk&featur e=related/ http://www. youtube.com/watch?v =aGEv7hlptRY&feature =related/

AbOut the AuthOr John Leslie King is W. W.

Warner Bishop Professor of Information and vice
provost at the University of Michigan. His research
is on the relationship between technical change
and social change, particularly focused at this time
on higher education. He is currently the liaison
between the Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure and the
Advisory Committee for Social, Behavioral and Managerial
Sciences at the National Science Foundation, and a member of the
Council of the Computing Community Consortium.