IBM's $10 Billion Machine

IBM’s SAGE is a large semi-automated air defense system from the Cold War era. It would analyze radar data in real-time to identify Soviet bombers. And it has built-in cigarette lighters and ashtrays at each console. It is the subject of Puzzle 47.

Here you can see about half of the wall of vacuum tubes; the other half could not fit in the frame.

Weight: 300 tons
Cost: ~$10B
This “company-making” sale was made personally by IBM founder Tom Watson, Sr.
Built in 1954, deployed in 1958, obsolete by 1960.

The last of 27 installations was shut down in 1983 (in Canada). In the final years, to the chagrin of the USAF, replacement vacuum tubes had to be bought from Soviet bloc countries.

The software development “employed about 20% of the world’s programmers at the peak of the project. When it was complete, the 250,000 lines of code was the most complex piece of software in existence.” (Computer History Museum details)

Comments and faves

  1. ★

    Automatt, davesag, Vanita, sharl, and 67 other people added this photo to their favorites.

  2. Telstar Logistics (86 months ago | reply)

    Excellent! I've been meaning to visit the museum.

    I love Cold War-era interfaces and control panels; Machines like the one above. And this, which was for sale in a Tuscon scrapyard. And this, which was the panel used for ICBM launches.

    My big project for the summer will be to build a functionally non-functional control panel for our new kitchen, inspired by stuff like this. I've been scrounding up old indicator lights, cockpit dials, and radar scrap for a few years... the goal is to wire 'em all into a metal enclosure, with heavy metal switches and knobs, so it all blinks and flashes like something from the Bat Cave. When I'm done, I hope to get that Cold War thrill, without all the messy mutually assured destruction.

  3. TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ (86 months ago | reply)

    what´s this? a newer version of Pong?

  4. davesag (86 months ago | reply)

    not pong, missile command.

  5. Max__ [deleted] (86 months ago | reply)

    Oh, and I bet these days we have toothbrushes capable of more calculations per second!
    Technologic acceleration, what a concept.

  6. TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ (86 months ago | reply)

    This may show that Mr. IBM more than a great computer technician, was a master merchant.

    World history should be re-written in those terms and would be more accurate. IMO...

  7. jurvetson (86 months ago | reply)

    Telstar: cool stuff. I will post some more photos as the museum is not fully open yet.

    Maximo: The modern Furby toy has 4x the compute power of the Apollo moon shot.

    Alieness: sales and service. I think IBM is realizing that is their core competency (e.g., shedding the PC business).

  8. Nell M (86 months ago | reply)

    Woooow. Very cool photo!
    The cigarrete lighters and ashtrays make me laugh. Are the lighters like the ones on cars?

    Telstar: You could convert your washing machine into a radar.

  9. Bistrosavage (86 months ago | reply)

    I would be even more impressed to hear that they siphoned heat away from the wall of vacuum tubes to light the cigarettes. =D

  10. Sam Scholes (86 months ago | reply)

    10 Billion!?!

  11. Matt Stevens (86 months ago | reply)

    Hey, was that $10 billion in 1954 dollars, or 2005 dollars? Even in 2005 dollars, that's one whopping huge contract. But, if it was 1954 dollars, then the SAGE development effort dwarfed even the Manhattan Project in cost.

  12. jurvetson (86 months ago | reply)

    I think it is current dollars. The docent told me that the console was $5B at the time, and that it was the company-making sale for IBM. When I looked online, I saw the $8-12B range quoted on the museum site (in the box that appears when you scroll to the right). But those don't quite reconcile, as a 1954 dollar is about 7.2x a 2005 dollar. Maybe it's a blend of system and service revenue into the 80s.... =)

  13. Shorty Harris (64 months ago | reply)

    Speaking of HEAT, it's the major enemy of "tube" systems (i.e., the vacuum-tube era). Kinda makes you wonder - what with all the THOUSANDS of tubes evident in this photograph - what percent of the time this behemoth was actually operational. I'll bet they spent a lot of time replacing tubes that had burnt out. Back in the mid-1970s my dad worked on an older tube-radar set at Kodiak, Alaska, and it was down for repairs probably half the time. Solid-state is much more reliable.

  14. dastpor2000 [deleted] (55 months ago | reply)

    it is interesting to.

  15. funtaday (53 months ago | reply)

    My dad was a patent examiner on this project. A lot of modern technology got it's start here.

  16. Ryoga2K (45 months ago | reply)

    Well a lot of problems regarding vacuum tube technology are resolved simply never turning off the device, actually hot is not the enemy of vacuum tubes but the change of temperature when you ignite or power down them.

  17. CatsFive (43 months ago | reply)

    Ha. Now Microsoft Solitaire has more lines of code. OK, unlikely, but a fun joke.

    I'm enjoying your stream.

  18. wcbrown_2001 (40 months ago | reply)

    I actually operated a SAGE air surveillance console like the one in the above picture when I was in the Air Force back in the day ('73-'77). I was stationed at the 25th NORAD Div. near Tacoma, WA and also spent a year at Cold Bay, AK. The system as described above used 1st generation computer technology (vacuum tubes). Now I work in a data center for a national health provider using 4th generation technology. One rack server (out of the 1,200 we have nationwide) would have the same processing power of more than 10,000 SAGE computers, and this is a very conservative estimate.

  19. jurvetson (40 months ago | reply)

    Love the first person perspecttive.

    ...reminds me of the 110-year abstraction of Moore's Law. The fundamental drivers of tech innovation continue their exponential pace of progress completely exogenous from the economy.

  20. davesdigitalphotos (40 months ago | reply)

    I remember the SAGE building during my days at KI Sawyer AFB. It controlled the F101s. We never knew when the Canadians might come over Lake Superior...LOL

  21. theodordh (39 months ago | reply)

    Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Great stock shots, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

  22. jurvetson (39 months ago | reply)

    I just met with a former IBM exec who remembers this program well.

    The debug protocol was poetic. Downtime was common. The diagnostic steps were:

    1) Visualize it. With the room lights off, the active tubes could be seen glowing. A dark patch was indicative of a power rail connector problem.

    2) Listen to the technology. Each of the SLT logic modules were wired through an OR gate and connected to an audio amp. So, as each logic module fired, it added to the acoustic summation. The engineers would listen to the song of the computer and could often recognize common variations.

    3)Whack a Mole. If the acoustic pattern seemed erratic, out comes the rubber hammer. Each of the circuit modules would receive a hammer tap to see if the song remains the same. If it changed, then that indicated a loose connector had just been banged back into place.

    A fascinating exercise in pattern recognition across the emergent melodies of complex systems...

  23. benjiman (39 months ago | reply)

    Vaguely reminiscent of how home users would typically address television signal issues, among others. WACK, to the side of the device.

  24. jamica1 (28 months ago | reply)

    Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Science, Technology, History, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

  25. Tom Raftery (28 months ago | reply)

    i used your image on this page greenmonk.net/the-rise-of-the-energy-manager- role/

    I tried to email to let you know but got a reply from boxbe asking me to click to be put on your priority guest list. As I dislike systems which place the burden of stopping spam back on the sender) I didn't click and decided to leave a comment here instead.

  26. opium_den (23 months ago | reply)

    Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Robots, Automatons, Mainframes and the Silicon Revolution, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

  27. This photo was invited and added to the Robots, Automatons, Mainframes and the Silicon Revolution group.

  28. Kaets Ebut (11 months ago | reply)

    > And it has built-in cigarette lighters and ashtrays at each console.

    Well, of course! Cigarettes were practically government-issued equipment back then. You wouldn't want your monitoring officers to miss an incoming raid because they went out for a smoke. IBM probably considered a built-in commode!

    > In the final years, to the chagrin of the USAF, replacement vacuum tubes
    > had to be bought from Soviet bloc countries.

    Much more to the chagrin of guitarists!

  29. This photo was invited and added to the The H-Bomb group.

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