1) SAGE in the History of Computing
a) What was Whirlwind originally supposed to produce? How did its objectives and scope evolve over time?
b) Would you say that the project was well managed?
c) What were its most important technical contributions to computing? How are these technologies used today?
2) SAGE and the Cold War
a) What was the appeal of SAGE to the US military? Were early (circa 1948-50) fears justified?
b) What was the relationship of the Air Force to the other services and the RAND corporation?
c) How does SAGE compare to the more recent plans for a National Missile Defense? (Think in particular about its use of new technologies, the kind of threat it guards against, its political significance, its purpose).
d) What effect did SAGE have on the control structure of US air defense? Was this inevitable?
e) Was SAGE a success? In what senses?
3) What prompted the development of SABRE?
a) In what ways was this a departure from the early (1954-58) use of computers in business administration? Were there any similarities? b) What was it about the airline business that made it a natural candidate for on-line operation? Were such applications common?
c) Are there parallels between this early on-line application and recent use of the Internet by business? What are the most important differences?
d) The book discusses the UPC bar code. What other technologies had to be in place for this to be useful (the answer is not all in the book)?
If you are interested in the use of computers and other high technology for military defense, the rest of Edwards’ book is well worth reading. There is a copy in the Colby library. Paul Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). For more technical details on SAGE and related projects, see From Whirlwind to MITRE: The R&D Story of The SAGE Air Defense Computer (History of Computing) by Kent C. Redmond, Thomas M. Smith, 2000. Other books on SAGE and Whirlwind are mentioned on page 312 of Computer.
A short IBM promotional video about SAGE is on the class website. Click here to watch it. (It’s in .avi format – Windows Media player should be able to display it).
Relatively little material about SAGE appears to be posted on the Web. A short article of SAGE appeared recently on the Dr Dobbs (a programming journal) website. Its appearance was related to a seminar on the subject at the Computer Museum History Center. (http://www.ddj.com/articles/2000/0085/0085a/0085a.htm). There is also some interesting SAGE nostalgia on the Sage Site (www.togger.com).
You might also be interested in the Cold War Science and Technology site at CMU (http://www.cmu.edu/coldwar/). This includes links to on-line syllabi and resources related to the Cold War.
SABRE is discussed in Copeland, Duncan G., Richard O. Mason, and James L. McKenney. "SABRE: The Development of Information-Based Competence and Execution of Information-Based Competition." IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 17, no. 3 (1995): 30-57. A revised version of the same story appears in McKenney, James L., Duncan C. Copeland, and Richard O. Mason. Waves of change : business evolution through information technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995.