6 ms·

SAGE jumpstarted today’s technology and built IBM into a powerhouse

76 points by furcyd 5y ago

bstro 5y ago
My dad was programmer on the SAGE project in the early 60s. He there were dozens of techs with shopping carts full of vacuum tubes going up and down the aisles 24 hours a day to keep it running. He also the circuit for storing one bit took up a 6 inch sided cube of space.
pjmlp 5y ago
Not only that, its follow up system SACCS, gave birth to JOVIAL, one of the first system programming languages, in 1958. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVIAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVIAL
fauria 5y ago
Maybe the title should be changed to uppercase "SAGE". The first thing that came to my mind was the enterprise software company: https://www.sage.com/ https://www.sage.com/
- pugworthy 5y ago
  Or SAGE Computer Technology waaay before that, who made some neat early 68000 based systems. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAGE_Computer_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAGE_Computer_Technology
  - scotty79 5y ago
    My first thought was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SageMath https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SageMath but it made no sense.
- MadeThisToReply 5y ago
  My first thought was the UK's "Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies", who have become a household name in Britain during the pandemic, and are most famous for having been repeatedly wrong about everything yet for some reason still taken seriously by many.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    'Independent SAGE' were worse in my opinion, they were shamelessly trying to piggyback on SAGE's credibility with the public with their intentionally misleading name. SAGE are the government's official scientific advisory group, Independent SAGE are little more than a lobby group for excessive use of the precautionary principle typo-squatting on an official organisation. But yeah, I'm not a fan of a lot of decisions SAGE made either. I think the decision by SAGE to use behavioural psychology to 'increase the sense of personal threat' and other manipulative tactics like that was unethical for example, and of course the modelling turned out to be quite far out from what actually transpired. I definitely think the press deserves a good chunk of the blame though, they latched onto the worse case scenarios SAGE modelled regardless of their likelihood and caused preventable panic in the process which isn't necessarily SAGE's fault. I guess it's all a moot point now, the recent revelations of the PM and other high-ranking politicians hosting parties in Downing Street with impunity while we were in the first 'nobody's allowed to leave the house but to work or shop' lockdown has massively reduced the any chance of further restrictions I think regardless of what SAGE or other scientists say. Regardless of anyone's opinion on their merit as a policy, lockdowns always depended on public consent which just isn't there any more.
ace2358 5y ago
Does anyone else find it terrifying how much could get done with so little in the old days? I know a lot of computing has changed and gotten a lot more demanding (like high res displayed, fast wireless networks) however things like this remind me why I refuse to install electron software. Or run web-apps for things that used to be a static html page (I’m thinking movie times). I feel like we’re standing on the shoulders of giants twiddling our thumbs when I read stories like this.
- __alexs 5y ago
  Maybe you'd spend less time twiddling your thumbs if you installed some of the excellent Electron apps our there?
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    I would be I am bored of killing processes in task manager.
    - lvncelot 5y ago
      Introducing - Electron killer! Easily kill electron processes. Just install our 350mb Electron app...
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        Weekend puzzle: Find and terminate all Electron/CEF/Node bloatware on a system without killing any dedicated web browsers.
        lvncelot 5y ago
        Easy enough when using w3m
      - jhgb 5y ago
        > Electron killer! Easily kill electron processes. You could even call it 'Positron' or something like that.
distalx 5y ago
> A breathtaking amount of storage: 64K of 32 bit words! So here total memory is 64K and each Kilo byte is a 32 bit word?
- ucosty 5y ago
  It's 64,000 'positions' of 32-bit words. That'd be 256,000 modern 8-bit bytes.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    For comparison, the original Macintosh (25 years later) had 128KB. SAGE really did have a crap-ton of memory for its time.
mhh__ 5y ago
The manuals for the computer SAGE was built around are absolutely fascinating to read. They are basically an introduction to the digital computer written - genuinely - from scratch. As with many books and monographs from this period, they stand as an example of how pedagogy can actually get worse as a field progresses (authors start making assumptions). http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/sage/3-112-0_Theory_Of_Programming_Apr59.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/sage/3-112-0_Theory_Of_Prog... It's dated 1959, not that much has actually changed since then in terms of the rough outline of assembly programming. We have domain specific languages, the AN/FSQ-7 was a domain specific computer (all 60K tubes of it).
sidewndr46 5y ago
I first learned about SAGE through an unlikely mechanism: sitting in the cockpit of a CF-100. There is a switch labeled "attack" that really confused me. It turns out the SAGE could be used to direct aircraft directly to a target. After learning about this, I did some more research and it seems a signal was broadcast that could be received to direct planes to a target SAGE had identified. I don't have a link to the documents, but originally it was a relatively small transmitter that was upgraded to a much powerful system, I think around 30000 watts of output. It was interesting to me because today I assume an attacker would either jam such a system or actually interfere with it in such a way to send the interceptor off course. I never could find any info on the actual signal transmitted and if it had any form of security. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33205/why-does-the-cf-100-autopilot-have-a-toggle-switch-labeled-attack https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33205/why-does-... Another cool fact: at the opposite end of the SAGE project we have the "Safeguard" project which was completed in 1975. It spent less than 24 hours in operational capacity before being cancelled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard...
- mewse-hn 5y ago
  One of the really interesting paragraphs from the article: The UK’s Royal Air Force, flying their new Vulcan bombers, got orders for the exercise, but the plucky Brits ignored some of the details. Flying their own attack profiles (essentially cheating) and using highly effective radar jammers, the Brits exposed wide gaps in SAGE capabilities. Despite a generally high success rate claimed for the fighters in “destroying” their targets, the best estimates were that only a quarter of the bombers were intercepted. So not only was this a truly fascinating early computing system, but the signals seemed quite vulnerable to jamming.
- nradov 5y ago
  At the time the USSR didn't really have any long range electronic warfare aircraft that could be used to effectively jam the SAGE transmitters before the bombers arrived.
pinot 5y ago
I went to college in Corvallis OR, which is near Camp Adair. One of these concrete bunkers still stands there. One of my roommates was a local and said it used to house a supercomputer. I guess he was right..

76 points by furcyd 5y ago

My dad was programmer on the SAGE project in the early 60s. He there were dozens of techs with shopping carts full of vacuum tubes going up and down the aisles 24 hours a day to keep it running. He also the circuit for storing one bit took up a 6 inch sided cube of space.

pjmlp 5y ago

Not only that, its follow up system SACCS, gave birth to JOVIAL, one of the first system programming languages, in 1958. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVIAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVIAL

fauria 5y ago

Maybe the title should be changed to uppercase "SAGE". The first thing that came to my mind was the enterprise software company: https://www.sage.com/ https://www.sage.com/

pugworthy 5y ago
Or SAGE Computer Technology waaay before that, who made some neat early 68000 based systems. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAGE_Computer_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAGE_Computer_Technology
- scotty79 5y ago
  My first thought was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SageMath https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SageMath but it made no sense.
MadeThisToReply 5y ago
My first thought was the UK's "Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies", who have become a household name in Britain during the pandemic, and are most famous for having been repeatedly wrong about everything yet for some reason still taken seriously by many.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  'Independent SAGE' were worse in my opinion, they were shamelessly trying to piggyback on SAGE's credibility with the public with their intentionally misleading name. SAGE are the government's official scientific advisory group, Independent SAGE are little more than a lobby group for excessive use of the precautionary principle typo-squatting on an official organisation. But yeah, I'm not a fan of a lot of decisions SAGE made either. I think the decision by SAGE to use behavioural psychology to 'increase the sense of personal threat' and other manipulative tactics like that was unethical for example, and of course the modelling turned out to be quite far out from what actually transpired. I definitely think the press deserves a good chunk of the blame though, they latched onto the worse case scenarios SAGE modelled regardless of their likelihood and caused preventable panic in the process which isn't necessarily SAGE's fault. I guess it's all a moot point now, the recent revelations of the PM and other high-ranking politicians hosting parties in Downing Street with impunity while we were in the first 'nobody's allowed to leave the house but to work or shop' lockdown has massively reduced the any chance of further restrictions I think regardless of what SAGE or other scientists say. Regardless of anyone's opinion on their merit as a policy, lockdowns always depended on public consent which just isn't there any more.

ace2358 5y ago

Does anyone else find it terrifying how much could get done with so little in the old days? I know a lot of computing has changed and gotten a lot more demanding (like high res displayed, fast wireless networks) however things like this remind me why I refuse to install electron software. Or run web-apps for things that used to be a static html page (I’m thinking movie times). I feel like we’re standing on the shoulders of giants twiddling our thumbs when I read stories like this.

__alexs 5y ago
Maybe you'd spend less time twiddling your thumbs if you installed some of the excellent Electron apps our there?
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I would be I am bored of killing processes in task manager.
  - lvncelot 5y ago
    Introducing - Electron killer! Easily kill electron processes. Just install our 350mb Electron app...
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Weekend puzzle: Find and terminate all Electron/CEF/Node bloatware on a system without killing any dedicated web browsers.
      - lvncelot 5y ago
        Easy enough when using w3m
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > Electron killer! Easily kill electron processes. You could even call it 'Positron' or something like that.

distalx 5y ago

> A breathtaking amount of storage: 64K of 32 bit words! So here total memory is 64K and each Kilo byte is a 32 bit word?

ucosty 5y ago
It's 64,000 'positions' of 32-bit words. That'd be 256,000 modern 8-bit bytes.
- notacoward 5y ago
  For comparison, the original Macintosh (25 years later) had 128KB. SAGE really did have a crap-ton of memory for its time.

mhh__ 5y ago

The manuals for the computer SAGE was built around are absolutely fascinating to read. They are basically an introduction to the digital computer written - genuinely - from scratch. As with many books and monographs from this period, they stand as an example of how pedagogy can actually get worse as a field progresses (authors start making assumptions). http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/sage/3-112-0_Theory_Of_Programming_Apr59.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/sage/3-112-0_Theory_Of_Prog... It's dated 1959, not that much has actually changed since then in terms of the rough outline of assembly programming. We have domain specific languages, the AN/FSQ-7 was a domain specific computer (all 60K tubes of it).

sidewndr46 5y ago

I first learned about SAGE through an unlikely mechanism: sitting in the cockpit of a CF-100. There is a switch labeled "attack" that really confused me. It turns out the SAGE could be used to direct aircraft directly to a target. After learning about this, I did some more research and it seems a signal was broadcast that could be received to direct planes to a target SAGE had identified. I don't have a link to the documents, but originally it was a relatively small transmitter that was upgraded to a much powerful system, I think around 30000 watts of output. It was interesting to me because today I assume an attacker would either jam such a system or actually interfere with it in such a way to send the interceptor off course. I never could find any info on the actual signal transmitted and if it had any form of security. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33205/why-does-the-cf-100-autopilot-have-a-toggle-switch-labeled-attack https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33205/why-does-... Another cool fact: at the opposite end of the SAGE project we have the "Safeguard" project which was completed in 1975. It spent less than 24 hours in operational capacity before being cancelled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard...

mewse-hn 5y ago
One of the really interesting paragraphs from the article: The UK’s Royal Air Force, flying their new Vulcan bombers, got orders for the exercise, but the plucky Brits ignored some of the details. Flying their own attack profiles (essentially cheating) and using highly effective radar jammers, the Brits exposed wide gaps in SAGE capabilities. Despite a generally high success rate claimed for the fighters in “destroying” their targets, the best estimates were that only a quarter of the bombers were intercepted. So not only was this a truly fascinating early computing system, but the signals seemed quite vulnerable to jamming.
nradov 5y ago
At the time the USSR didn't really have any long range electronic warfare aircraft that could be used to effectively jam the SAGE transmitters before the bombers arrived.

pinot 5y ago

I went to college in Corvallis OR, which is near Camp Adair. One of these concrete bunkers still stands there. One of my roommates was a local and said it used to house a supercomputer. I guess he was right..