🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10970@venera.UUCP> rave...@isi.edu (Paul Raveling) writes:
>In article <60...@wpi.wpi.edu>, jwhi...@wpi.wpi.edu (John C Whitson
>KB2GNC) writes:
>
>	[About spurious missile warnings due to a chip failure]
>
>	Back in the late '60's someone I knew at UCLA went to work
>	for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, and came back
>	one day with a story about a software bug.
>
>	She was working on the SAGE, twin of the NORAD SAGE and
>	apparently interconnected with it.  For the benefit of the
>	younger folks, SAGE was probably the largest vacuum tube
>	computer ever built -- when SDC brought theirs up it used
>	1/2 the power in Santa Monica.  Exactly how NORAD used it
>	wasn't crystal clear, since it lived in the black hole of
>	military secrecy.  Stated generally though, it collected
>	information about incoming hostile bombers and missiles,
>	and would coordinate dispatching NORAD resources to intercept
	
	Speaking of SAGE, I was an Air Force tech on the last one
to be shutdown, in December 1984 at Luke AFB(Phoenix). Over 100K
vacuum tubes per computer, drum and core memory, and hard-wired
plugboards for the first 256 locations in memory. Definitely an
experience not soon forgotten.
	Despite all the legends, the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground
Environment) was simply used to track and identify incoming
aircraft and dispatch fighters to catch the bad guys, if any
happened to be coming. It worked fine, but the enormous power,
air conditioning, and maintenance costs(tubes are expensive) put
it to death at age 25(?).


				Pat