Designed to detect Russian nuclear bombers, the IBM-built SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) pioneers many technologies including a special-purpose form of networking. There are 23 computer centers across North America, communicating with radar stations, counter-attack aircraft, and each other — all in real-time, as potentially threatening events are happening.

Besides networking SAGE also helps pioneer interactive computing and multi-user systems. Hundreds of people use the system simultaneously, interacting through groundbreaking graphical consoles. Each console has its own large screen, pointing device (a light gun), a telephone, and an ashtray. Ever on the alert for a Soviet attack, SAGE operators would describe the experience as endless hours of boredom…broken by seconds of sheer terror. By the early 1960s, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) will make the bomber threat – and SAGE itself – partly obsolete. But the system will operate until the 1980s.