Box 4.1

Project Whirlwind and SAGE

Two closely connected computing projects, Whirlwind and SAGE, demonstrate the influence of federal research and development programs during the early days of computing. They not only generated technical knowledge and human resources, but they also forged a unique relationship among government, universities, and industry. The Whirlwind computer was originally intended to be part of a general-purpose flight simulator, but it evolved into the first real-time, general-purpose digital computer. SAGE, an air-defense system designed to protect against enemy bombers, made several important contributions to computing in areas as diverse as computer graphics, time-sharing, digital communications, and ferrite-core memories. Together, these two projects shared a symbiotic relationship that strengthened the early computer industry.

Whirlwind originated in 1944 as part of the Navy's Airplane Stability and Control Analyzer (ASCA) project. At that time, the Navy made extensive use of flight simulators to test new aircraft designs and train pilots; however, each new aircraft design required a separate computer specially created for its particular design. ASCA was intended to negate the need to build individual computers for the flight simulators by serving as a general-purpose simulator that could emulate any design programmed into it. Jay Forrester, the leader of the computer portion of the ASCA project, soon recognized that analog computers (which were typically used on aircraft simulators) would not be fast enough to operate the trainer in real time. Learning of work in electronic digital computing as part of ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Forrester began investigating the potential for real-time digital computers for Whirlwind. By early 1946, Forrester decided to pursue the digital route, expanding the goal of the Whirlwind program from building a generalizable aircraft simulator to designing a real-time, general-purpose digital computer that could serve many functions other than flight simulation.

Pursuing a digital computer required dramatic increases in computing speeds and reliability, both of which hinged on development of improved computer memory--an innovation that was also needed to handle large amounts of data about incoming airplanes. Mercury delay-line memories, which used sonic pulses to record information and were being pursued by several other research centers, were too slow for the machine Forrester envisioned. He decided instead to use electrostatic storage tubes in which bits of information could be stored as an electrical charge and which claimed read-and-write times of a few milliseconds. Such tubes proved to be expensive, limited in storage capacity, and unreliable. Looking for a new memory alternative, Forrester came across a new magnetic ceramic called Deltamax and began working on the first magnetic core memory, a project to which he later assigned a graduate student, Bill Papian.

The expansion of Whirlwind's technical objectives resulted in expanding project budgets that eventually undermined support for the project. Forrester originally planned Whirlwind as a 2-year, $875,000 program, but he increased his cost estimate for the Whirlwind computer itself to $1.9 million in March 1946 and to almost $3 million by 1947 (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 1996, pp. 161-163). By 1949, Whirlwind made up nearly 65 percent of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) mathematics research budget and almost 10 percent of ONR's entire contract research budget (Edwards, 1996, p. 79). As a part of a general Department of Defense initiative to centralize computer research in 1951, ONR planned to reduce Whirlwind's annual budget from $1.15 million to $250 thousand in 1951, threatening the viability of the project (Edwards, 1996, p. 91). Support for the project was salvaged only after George Valley, Jr., a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and chairman of the Air Defense System Engineering Committee, realized that Whirlwind might play a critical role in a new air-defense program, SAGE, and convinced the Air Force to provide additional funding for the project, thereby adding to its credibility.

In 1949, Valley began lobbying the Air Force to improve U.S. air-defense capability in the face of the nation's growing vulnerability to Soviet bombers (Freeman, 1995, p. 2). Valley was put in charge of the Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee to investigate possible solutions. The resulting Project Charles Summer Study Group recommended that the Air Force ask MIT to build a laboratory to carry out the experimental and field research necessary to develop a system to safeguard the United States (Freeman, 1995, p. 6). In response, MIT created Project Lincoln, now known as Lincoln Laboratory, to create the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, system.

Through SAGE, the Air Force became the major sponsor of Whirlwind, enabling the project to move toward completion. By late 1951, a prototype ferrite-core memory system was demonstrated, and by 1953, the Whirlwind's entire memory was replaced with core memory boasting a 9-microsecond access time, effectively ending the research phase of the program. The Air Force subsequently purchased production versions of the computer (designed in a cooperative effort between MIT and IBM) to equip each of its 23 Direction Centers. Each center had two IBM-manufactured versions of Whirlwind: one operating live and one operating in standby mode for additional reliability. The machines accepted input from over 100 different information sources (typically from ground, air, and seaborne radars) and displayed relevant information on cathode-ray-tube displays for operators to track and identify aircraft.

The first SAGE Direction Center was activated in 1958, and deployment continued until 1963, when final deployment of 23 centers was completed at an estimated cost of $8 billion to $12 billion. Although a technical success, SAGE was already outdated by the time of its completion. The launch of Sputnik shifted the most feared military threat to the United States from long-range bombers to intercontinental ballistic missiles. SAGE command centers continued to operate into the middle of the 1980s but with a reduced urgency.

All told, ONR spent roughly $3.6 million on Whirlwind, the Air Force, $13.8 million. In return, Whirlwind and SAGE generated a score of innovations. On the hardware side, Whirlwind and SAGE pioneered magnetic-core memory, digital phone-line transmission and modems, the light pen (one of the first graphical user interfaces), and duplexed computers. In software, they pioneered use of real-time software; concepts that later evolved into assemblers, compilers, and interpreters; software diagnosis programs; time-shared operating systems; structured program modules; table-driven software; and data description techniques. Five years after its introduction in Whirlwind, ferrite-core memory replaced every other type of computer memory, and remained the dominant form of computer memory until 1973. Royalties to MIT from nongovernment sales amounted to $25 million, as MIT licensed the technology broadly.¹

In addition, SAGE accelerated the transfer of these technologies throughout the nascent computer industry. While Lincoln Laboratory was given primary responsibility for SAGE, the project also involved several private firms such as IBM, RAND, Systems Development Corporation (the spin-off from RAND), Burroughs, Western Electric, RCA, and AT&T.² Through this complex relationship between academia, industry, and the military, SAGE technologies worked their way into commercial products and helped establish the industry leaders. SAGE was a driving force behind the formation of the American computer and electronics industry (Freeman, 1995, p. 33). IBM built 56 computers for SAGE, earning over $500 million, which helped contribute to its becoming the world's largest computer manufacturer (Edwards, 1996, pp. 101-102; Freeman, 1995, p. 33). At its peak, between 7,000 and 8,000 IBM employees worked on the project. SAGE technology contributed substantially to the SABRE airline reservation system marketed by IBM in 1964, which later became the backbone of the airline industry (Edwards, 1996, p. 102). Kenneth Olsen, who worked on Whirlwind before founding Digital Equipment Corporation, called Whirlwind the first minicomputer and states that his company was based entirely on Whirlwind technology (Old Associates, 1981, p. 23).

SAGE also contributed to formalizing the programming profession. While developing software for the system, the RAND Corporation spun off the Systems Development Corporation (SDC) to handle the software for SAGE. SDC trained thousands of programmers who eventually moved into the workforce. Numerous computer engineers from both IBM and SDC started their own firms with the knowledge they acquired from SAGE.

SAGE also established an influential precedent for organizational management. Lincoln Laboratory was structured in the same style as MIT had run the Radiation Laboratory during World War II, in that it had much less management involvement than other equivalent organizations. As a result, researchers had a large amount of freedom to pursue their own solutions to problems at hand. Norman Taylor, one of the key individuals who designed SAGE at Lincoln Laboratory credited the management style for the projects' successes:

I think Bob [Everett] put his finger on one important thing: the freedom to do something without approval from top management. Take the case of the 65,000 word memory. . . . We built that big memory, and we didn't go to the steering committee to get approval for it. We didn't go up there and say, "Now, here's what we ought to do, it's going to cost this many million dollars, it's going to take us this long, and you must give us approval for it." We just had a pocket of money that was for advanced research. We didn't tell anybody what it was for; we didn't have to. (Freeman, 1995, p. 20)

This management style contrasted with the more traditional bureaucratic style of most American corporations of the time. It was subsequently adopted by Digital Equipment Corporation (under Kenneth Olsen's leadership) and eventually imitated by many--if not most--of the information technology firms that dot the suburban Boston and Silicon Valley landscapes. Although not the first to pioneer this management style and the organizational ethos it engendered, Lincoln Laboratory had demonstrated its functionality in large computing systems development.

² Although AT&T is a private company, much of its research was supported through a tax on customers. Hence, its research is often considered quasi-public.