Cold War Computing - The SAGE System

[ActiveStorage]

so thats what NORAD is all about?

[QuickRefs]

My remote controller will put this giant to shame.

[camposantoo]

This is exactly copy of german defence system in last years of WWII. Serbs didn't have aviation, no chance of developing systems like this, wich is originally german. Simple.

[jwaustinmunguy]

@camposantoo The German system of WW II was similar to the British system. Both of these used GCI or Ground Controlled Intercept. There was a similar system in Germany but this was not implemented until the 1970's. NADGE or NATO Air Defence Ground Environment. One of their SOC's was in the 'Kindsbach Cave' which is described elsewhere. You can read a lot about the RAF systems and especially their approach to defeating the German Air Defense systems at the RAF Historical Society.

[badbobbyhughes]

if i was to enter a room with so many lights and dials and buttons, i'd have to be restrained and sedated

[Zher0kool]

Interesting.

[SpecialEdAllstar]

@selahia The outright usefulness of this system never had a chance to be proven out as the cold war never went hot. However, the advances in technology this project wrought out have been wildly successful. Often times it takes a large and wealthy nation to innovate in a totally unknown field. In the beginning there was no market for these machines. It took the military to prove just how useful computers could be. What advances in technology has your nation driven forward?

[selahia]

@SpecialEdAllstar Nikola Tesla, Mihailo Pupin, Milutin Milankovic... - all Serbs. They contributed very much to science and technology. Americans made no advance in technology, foreigners did! They come to America in search for better life because America sucked up their country. You heard about neocolonialism? That's what America's bankars do. They enslave you, then, if you are good, offer you to come and help them tame technology so they can enslave faster and better. All is profit!

[jwaustinmunguy]

@SpecialEdAllstar You think that the Soviets never tested this system. They made thousands of 'penetration runs' with manned bombers, most notably the TU-95 Bear. They also deployed their famous fleet of 'fishing boats' around our shores. The best fishing was usually near a NORAD radar station like CFS Holberg on Norhern Vancouver Island. Prime fishing time was during SAC/NORAD joint exercises.

[SpecialEdAllstar]

@selahia Without this paranoia and defense spending you would not be able to comment on this video. It was military budgets that provided the funding needed to drive forward this technology. The internet is a result of this spending. The early advances in computing cost tens of millions of dollars to produce any results at all. The computer itself was a product of war. US defense budgets drove innovation and created the technological foundation for the world we enjoy today.

[selahia]

@SpecialEdAllstar Every thing that man has created is product of competition ( war is the highest level of competition because life is in game) or the will of a individual to become famous (peacefull creativity ex. Nikola Tesla). I hate American politics, look what are they doing in Libya today...What they have done to my country. They do all wrong, and they have done it wrong throughout history. When SSSR was wining "space race"they faked moon landing...Nation of actors that's America.

[eMGeeGFX]

Ken Olsen (the key-founder of DEC, the Digital Equipment Corporation) was involved with this, wasn't he? I'm a loyal VMS user (as in OpenVMS). R.I.P. Ken Olsen.

[selahia]

What a paranoid Nation America is, i can't believe!

They were never attacked.

They spyed on Russians with planes, and they always attacked others.

Instead doing smart project they spent lot of money, people and other things on this clumsy system which never actually worked, as much as i know...Please say to me if I'm wrong.

[jwaustinmunguy]

@selahia Your wrong. SAGE worked and NATO built a version the the 1970's. Read some history about the Soviets. They occupied Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. etc. The US rarely occupy the countries they have 'liberated'. You can observe your likely enemies abilities by doing what they do and that is what electronic surveillance is all about.

[kjdavey]

The real "Wopper"

[persevere67]

my netbook would kick this machines ass

[abc212345]

frames per 2 seconds = 1! wo0t

[RagingBubuli]

Can it run Crysis?

[BarneySaysHi]

@RagingBubuli No, but I bet running it was a Crysis by itself.

[kmoss1122]

I really dunno why I like watching vintage computer videos, they just really seem interesting

[sixstringmania]

...and so John Henry Eden , computer-president of the enclave was created ...

[fotistis]

SAGA SEGA COUINCIDENSE?

[docatomics]

...first high altitude emp and the system is blind, money well spent

~ if your only goal is to terrrorize the tax payer into forking over the dough into your trough

[mogFX]

@docatomics NORAD installations were hardened against EMP due to test data gathered from project Trinity a little over 10 years before hand. Not to mention the fact that Hollywood has over exaggerated both the distance and effectiveness of an EMP. Even today the only weapons capable of generating large amounts of EMP and capable of being used in a tactical fashion are nukes, and at the effective distance of the EMP your more worried about the explosion rather then your computer.

[docatomics]

@mogFX ...false , although it may have been true at one time, bsed on the limited test you refer too

~much has changes since then including the the first , 2nd & III rd & 4TH heavens (earth centric) ; but know need to post that 3 tera bits of data, just look at the modern satilite faliure rate in Heaven 2 & 3 and the aircraft faliure rate in # one (THINK CARNIVAL ).

[LonesomeTroubadour]

What's curious here is that the Russians didn't have supersonic bombers, they didn't even have true jet bombers, they were subsonic turboprop aircraft like the TU-95 bear. 

[RavenRof]

I wonder whats being used now to defend the airspace of the U.S.A. Must be a wonder of tecnology

[mankyman6]

@RavenRof

There's probably a lot more complex system than this. I doubt it's just one computer system that runs everything.

[jwaustinmunguy]

@RavenRof R/SAOC was updated by General Dynamics in the 1990s. Remember that the computing power needed is not very large and they have been at it for sixty years. I would expect to see this sort of application in a private, secure cloud some day. Distributed, redundant systems with lots of connectivity to weapons like F-22, F-35, AWACS, AEGIS, the White-house X-Box 360, Obama's iPhone. There's an app for that!

[LevitskiSRGE]

Funny is that this movie was made with the idea that soviets will get to see it. "Dont mess with the doom machine" - Dr. Strangelove

[ewkeane]

USAF in domination over Conus skys since 1950"s?

Using "guided" (remote controlled) airplanes and missiles?

Makes one wonder whats going on.

[SuperBigEv]

sage radar was supposed to be this big thing but in reality they had many many problems with sage radar

[hyderpotter]

Is SAGE like a big network?

[sattanhellsing]

1950's computer like SAGE are great ... the study in that field until 2000 and we still got 9/11 LOL .... i think now in all honesty 9/11 was an inside job all the way .

[jbingfa]

@sattanhellsing So Sage betrayed us is this what u r saying? Why this did not happen during the Cold War?

[VrustinpeaceV]

@jbingfa exactly!  why this didn´t happen back then?

...and now was so "easy" to break.

[jbingfa]

@VrustinpeaceV System Sage and Northcom in general have managed to keep American Soil unmolested from any kind of military Soviet Invasion during Cold War i think that your response is quite extreme.

[VrustinpeaceV]

@jbingfa extreme indeed!, extreme as the 9/11 itself; its really hard for me to believe it, practically all the (high technology) security systems failed(??!).

during the cold war there was no misil attacks, soviet invasion or a situation similar , if something like that happens the war is inminent with or without the alert of a system SAGE or similar, if the system of security is belived to be strong, then 9/11 prove that its got major flaws.

[jbingfa]

@VrustinpeaceV The Human Factor is usually the main flaw in a computer system, that does not mean that American Thinkers are behind 9 11

[VrustinpeaceV]

@jbingfa yep, I agree.

[jwaustinmunguy]

@jbingfa I think I saw a radar screen before I ever saw a television. (My Dad was so cool!). 9/11 was outside the scope of the Air Defense mission in every country. Congress would never have funded (and never will) a system that would blanket CONUS.

[jwaustinmunguy]

@sattanhellsing NATO primary search radars all face outwards and are positioned around the edges of North America. A lot of that includes Canada' North Warning Line -- a long way away. There never were a lot of military search radars in the interior. You can do it no with AWACS but you have to expect it. You can only defend against credible threats -- Elvis could attack in a flying saucer even today.

[biped19]

Skynet dude, Skynet.

[SunnyLEGO]

SE~~~~GA~~~~!

wait

it's SAGE

[makthnife]

@KenugrBGD are you 6 years old? worst grammar ever...i dont even know what your point is, to respond. I say we should have bombed a third and fourth Jap city, and should nuke the hell out of Afghanistan.

[ironbear]

If only this highly advanced system had been operating on 9/11.

[Datan0de]

@ironbear Nothing would've been different. The current ATC system in the US is descended from the SAGE system. The 9/11 attacks used civilian aircraft. 9/11 wasn't a failure in ability to track aircraft. Your comment is meaningless unless it's your assertion that any civilian aircraft that deviates from its registered flight plan for any reason should be blown out of the sky. If that IS what you're claiming, then I hope you don't work for the FAA or the Air Force.

[jvolstad]

They should have a system like this to defend against illegal aliens.

[bootnecklad]

SAGE system was the begining of skynet!!!

[showroommeryll]

ahhh propaganda marvellous

[phdecora]

and yet by the early 60s the soviets had put most energy into ICBM nukes and de-emphasied conventional weaponry (ie, bombers)

[paputt]

one might wonder why they made a big ass marketing campaign out of their super-advanced air defense technology...

Or just remember that the entire cold war was basically a marketing campaign...

[DoubleDutchBust]

1:27

[shutup735]

:) fuckin' windows 51!

[26highstreet]

the biggest threat to america has always come from within.

They were paranoid to the extreme of russian a attack that never happened.

The usa has more serial killers and terrorists and has started or been involved in more wars than any other country

[MokomaSusi]

"been involved in more wars than any other country "

lol, all this coming from british guy.

[onionofdeath]

japan was the oppressor, they attacked us,so we attacked them. It was a WAR, and that is how WAR works. We warned we would drop nukes (after we had already showed them what a nuke was) and they ignored us. I'm not sorry we bombed japan (but I am sorry innocent lives had to be lost).

[snedie69er]

@onionofdeath

I am sure they would feel the same way if the tables where turned. Watching as the skin is litterally evaporated from your mothers skin, her blood begins to boil instantly and her nervous system goes into shock resulting in the most horrific pain possible. At 4 seconds, she would likely be dead, along with the other 300,000 in her town.

Civians die at the hands of a few power hungry men and woman. If we had no governments that could control an army, we would have no major wars.

[MokomaSusi]

". At 4 seconds, she would likely be dead, along with the other 300,000 in her town."

It takes less than a blink of an eye when you die from nuclear blast... if you are in gorund zero. You dont have time to see anything.

Did you learn that from "grave of fireflies"?

"300,000 in her town."

300.000? Bombing in Nagasaki killed 80.000+ and in Hiroshima 100.000+

Of course big figures... but pale if compred to what japanese did in places like Nanking.

[snedie69er]

Sorry, I bow down to you experties in killing civians with nuclear weapons.

[horhey89]

i cud dig this

[makthnife]

@snedie69er bullshit. even cavemen had wars- no governments then. Communists had many a war. Power hungry men and women? Look at Corporations; those with women leaders have more turmoil, higher turnover (takes some research but the facts are there), and have a greater pretension for takeovers.What does this mean? Women in power cause more drama/negative situations due to their decisions based on emotions and not facts (i.e. I. Marcos), IMHO.Whats the use arguing w. a Commie anyways. Nuk u ass!

[snedie69er]

@makthnife

Oh I see, your a guy who thinks that a woman is an parasite, that all her actions are controlled by emotions?

You know your just like the old Army Generals who discriminated againts any woman been in the armed services, or a woman having a responsible job.

It sounds very much to me like your the "Commie"

[snedie69er]

@onionofdeath

And did it occur to you that the attack on pearl harbour was the outcome of a pre-emptive strike based on reliable evidence that the USA was increasing the strength of it's military forces in preperation for an attack on a foreigh nation?

[MokomaSusi]

"military forces in preperation for an attack on a foreigh nation? "

I guess chinese and koreans were also planning to invade "Nippon" since japanese were killing people in those both countries too...

[makthnife]

@snedie69er cite this please

[XxSuperSagexX]

My name is Sage :D

[panaflex]

The Almaden air force base on Mt Umunhum in the Santa Cruz Mountians near San Jose, CA was a SAGE installation. The "cube" building that housed the radar and SAGE system still exists and sits vacant overlooking the valley.

[captinseperoth]

@panaflex

what a shame!

[03pickles]

this is fake. americans arn't smart enough to make something like this

[PObserver]

It's the precursor to NORAD.

[Datan0de]

@PObserver It was actually part of NORAD.

[sbmrunning]

was this actually built all over the country?

[lolokoperro]

sinester sounds

[TakeFiv3]

SAGE GOES IN ALL FIELDS

[marlls1989]

Just one redundancy node, in such a crucial system

[blueblob4]

So How many GHz/ MHz would the SAGE have?

[marlls1989]

that is not a measure of performance any where but within the same chip...

The best cross chips reference would be IPS or OPS, but are not perfect as well, as what is done within 2 operation in one arch could be done within 1 in another...

[Datan0de]

@blueblob4 In all likelihood, a solar powered calculator that you can buy in a blister pack at the drug store for $.99 has faster numerical computing power than an AN/FSQ-7. As far as actual capability, it's probably not quite as powerful as a Commodore 64. The computer you're reading this comment on almost certainly has an order of magnitude more computing power than the entire SAGE network combined, and more than every computer on the planet combined when this video was made.

[captinseperoth]

@Datan0de

so if you SOME HOW went back in time,that 99 cent calculator would be worth a pretty penny

[pbizunow]

@Datan0de

And yet -- it was multitasking, multiuser and networked...with GUI...

[ANARCHYdashTVdotCOM]

What, you mean sneak a bomber over some civilian cities and drop nukes on them,even women, children, the elderly, and people not even involved in any war! How sinister and evil! Oh, snap, wait, the US government did it first. 600,000 dead.

[boazandjiacinth]

Although i dont agree with war, Japan has formally admitted that short of the nuclear strikes it suffered in 45, the entire country including women, elderly and even kids were trained armed and prepared to fight if and when the allied invasion took place, again i do not condone what happened, but the alternative would have cost more than 600,000 live as bad as that is. My grandfather fought against the germans, and later the japanese. Nazis where considered gentlemen compared to the japanese..

[cobrachoppergirl]

Yeah, that's what the US govt wants you to believe, that every Japanese would fight to the death. Its hogwash. For one thing, babies can't fight, kids under 9 can't fight, old women and men can't fight, and there were US citizens in both Japanese cities as well as other nationals, and plenty of people I'm sure who were pacifist and against the war from the very beginning. All were nuclear fried. And all were civilian /not-military targets. These were civilian cities, not battleships.

[Lumotaku]

dear lady you are unfortunatlety wrong the japanese were prepared to fight to the bitter end. There are movies you can watch of them training with things such as spears and yes old women. The bombing of horishima was the right thing to do to destroy a countrys ability to fight you also have to destroy its will to fight.

[cobrachoppergirl]

rubbish, its a well known fact one of the incompetencies of the japanese army was their preoccupation with volks type weapons, particularly bamboo spears. even their rifles were primitive and outdated with iron sights. hilter had hitler youth training to fight 'to the bitter end' -- they did not. no tmuch 15 year old boys can do, or old women. i'm sure many civilians in those cities were opposed to the war, as there were many people opposed to the Iraq war here in the US.

[BrendaQG]

@cobrachoppergirl The japanese literally thought of their Emperor as the divine son of heaven. To let foreign troops on to their land while the emporor, their god, said not to was unthinkable.

Don't attiribute our current, and western thought pattern...to give aid and comfort to an enemy while at war...as being theirs.

In WWII most countries fought until the bitter end. (Except France... the cheese eating surrender monkeys!)

[makthnife]

@Lumotaku well said. Such a pity we have to fight idiots, who like this person, are so misinformed, they believe their own inaccuraicies (sic).

[makthnife]

@MokomaSusi u r so wrong, its silly, try a little research next time, baby

[MokomaSusi]

@makthnife

I'm wrong? please explain. 

[makthnife]

@ANARCHYdashTVdotCOM go fuk yerself. move to China where you belong, any maybe we'll nuke yer ass too. Blind, deaf, and stupid is no way to go through life, son. too late.

[mattmatt115]

what a joke this system is.

Talk about blindly handing out billions of dollars to these corporations and expecting to be "safe" from the Soviet threat, what threat?

OH YEAH thats right. The arms race we, erm they started. Good thing for that huh!

Somehow i think if the Soviets DID decide to attack us, these command posts would be overwhelmed with information and there would be so much confusion on how to interpret the data

Collossal waste of money IMO

[boazandjiacinth]

i wonder what happens to ATOMIC weapons when the planes carrying them are tracked and then followed and finally shot down, the crew of the aforementioned plane wouldnt DARE detonate the weapon , would the... sage how wise?

[maxrioseco]

ahahah the same question here xD lol

what about an enemy plane over a city... down by sage system blah blah... and the nuclear weapon??? dropped over the city? O.O

[marlls1989]

the enemy plane is probably destroyed outside of any populatinal bondaries, that is probably the reson of such imensive system to detect threads as early as possible.

And any atomic weapon, would also be detonated in the counter attack, causing the dead of the soviet bastard carrying the murderous tool. Away from any city or civil population.

[atpcfi]

Everything you see in the movie was true. As I was stationed at the Washington Air Defense Sector (WADS) 1961 to 1962. Long after SAGE was disbanded I saw some of the displays being used in Hollywood sifi movies.

[dwarftoad]

Hmm, I wonder how much is true and how much is disinformation (especially the explanation of how NORAD is organized geographically and how the network is structured)

[MightySaturn5]

excellent video...very interesting and informative

[FacultyFan]

Reminds me of Skynet lol.

[xav233]

was the screen blinking rapidely?

[jeroen79]

In a way, yes.

These were cathode ray tubes and the picture was drawn by sweeping an electronbeam over the screen.

When a point on the screen is struck it will light up and then slowly fade.

On todays PC CRT screens you often see a brighter or dimmer horizontal bar moving over the screen.

This is because the camera will rapidly take individul pictures and on these the lighting and fading can be seen.

Also, the rate of the diplay and the camera may not be synchronised.

[jeroen79]

Notice the 'guns' the operators are holding to the screen?

When the part of the screen under it lights up these will send a signal to the computer.

the computer knows what it was drawing at that moment so it will know where the gun is on the screen.

In this way the operator can 'click' on something.

[mendax1773]

It's worth the trip whenever you're in the area. I live about 100 miles from the museum so I go when I'm down in that area. I've seen the part of the SAGE they have on display (it is a huge computer after all!) and the one thing that surprised me was the built-in cigarette lighter and ash tray on the video consoles.

[matkovicha]

Cool!

[CapitanoGUC]

well . one day sage gona take over the commant and atemt to eliminat the entire humanity by buldin cyborgs .... - you know all this ....:)

[anfsq8]

I found this video very interesting as I during my stint in the USAF I worked at the 40th Air Division on the ANFSQ8 computer. I accidently found this link as my YouTube name is anfsq8 and while searching I came across this video. Thanks for posting it Legend813a.

[dcb1138]

The entire system has the computing power of a modern day cell phone. But cost 1/3 the GNP.

[maxrioseco]

OMG!! that reminds me IBM mainframe spots lol.

[serjheals]

OMFG so if sage means (semi-automatic Ground Enviroment)....then my friends whos name is sage...would he be a mobile computer built by our government??!??

[mjdoomreviews]

reminds me of skynet from the terminator films lol

[GREENTAMBOURINE]

Reminds me of the 1960s Ken Russell film "The Billion Dollar Brain" (Len Deighton). also, in the early 1980s cards and reel-to-reel were still in use to regulate machinery in a steel mill where I worked.

[LeonardRockstein]

They must have cried when they realised how quickly all this kit became obsolete.

[AGL727]

Yes, the ICBMs did make it obsolete, but the computers were revolutionary for the time. SAGE also laid the foundation for the modern air traffic control system.

[rockyPants4000]

Hardly. The need for defense was there, and it was addressed. There is such a vast budget and industrial capability available in the U.S.A. that any strategic challenge is very easily met, and modified or discarded when necessary. Remember, the U.S. GDP equals the next five countries COMBINED. This was just regular business for such a large country.

[fuzzplugjones]

At least they were still alive and safe so they *could* cry.

[marshalauth]

Where is it now?

[ComputerHistory]

An original SAGE Computer system is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

[toasteee252]

haha.. do you think all these people that were working in the computer room feeding it cards and changing reels and basically making it run. Could have fathomed that just forty years later a massively smaller offspring of this computer would be replacing them for their jobs and making the humans obsolete.

[toasteee252]

produced by western electric company...where we can power your toaster and shoot a missle and kill commies.

Haha..an electric company is the last kind of company I would think about national defense.

[Zoomer30]

Something tells me the guys that had to stand near that machine dont have to worry about having kids.

[georgewtwat]

pure "keep 'em scared comedy"

[bobby19911991]

i may not install flash player on school but i have to wach it for informatica

[kamaze144]

This film is total, crude propaganda.

It claims that "supersonic bombers" could be over the States, delivering their payloads, "too fast to track". At the time, the Soviets didn't even have jet-powered bombers, much less supersonic ones. (The US didn't have supersonic bombers in 1958 either!)

Also, the SAGE system was obsolete by 1964, because the Soviets started deploying ICBMs. SAGE was useless against missiles.

SAGE was totally obsolete by the time it was deployed...

[deepquicksand]

What you are saying is true but all of the things that sage was designed to do were expected of the Soviets. We had no way of knowing they wouldn't build supersonic bombers and that would remain their preferred weapon.

[toasteee252]

true, it's easy when you look back on history and judge it by the events leading up till today. Back then they were in a race not to be blown up,and could not be sure what the soviets had.. look at sputnik. They knew that the same type of german scientist we had working for us after ww2 was working for them. Jets were still relatively new, we were still using airplanes at this time. Did you expect them to know it all? Of course this is A.F.prop. other side was using worse us comparing us.

[retdetsgt]

Baloney. What's your source of expertise? I repaired the SAGE system and it wasn't obsolete against ICBM's at all. Missiles were not too fast at all for the system to track. Your remark is pure ignorance. The reason it became obsolete was that a better and faster system was developed at Cheyenee Mountain.

[jbyork]

Skynet?

[DoktorStrangelove]

SAGE was like Skynet's extra-chromosome ancestor.

[polarbear60]

This is so cool to watch, like an old propaganda film.

[tommeken16]

I agree with you!! :p :D