Oral History of Robert Everett - Computer History Museum

Oral History of Robert Everett
and since the nuclear weapon can take out the hard ones, there was no point in spending money on the
hard ones. That was a decision I was not privy to. But things like that went on.
Hendrie: Yes. I remember reading something about a much smaller version of the SAGE computer, a
transistorized version. Was that ever done? Did that replace the tube versions in operation? Could you
talk a little bit about that? What you know about that.
Everett: No. There was a proposal to put in a so-called “Super-SAGE,” which was a transistorized
machine, which originally was intended to be underground. And it was made out of transistors, not the
kind we have today but individual transistors. And a decision was made not to go ahead with that
program. Now there was also the BUIC System, which was not made by IBM. It was made by, I think,
Burroughs, which did the tracking and so on at the radar site. And the idea was that then there were more
of them.
Hendrie: And so a little bit less vulnerable?
Everett: BUIC stood for "Backup Interceptors something". So that was the idea. It's funny, the first BUIC
machine came to MITRE and was set up and turned on. And they found out – it was very interesting – that
when it started running it used up all the computer time available without any airplanes or interceptors. It
was all overhead . It was much faster than the SAGE system, so here was this computer with
five times the capacity or something and only supposedly ten percent of the airplanes that…it didn't have
any capacity at all . Partly it was written in a higher level language. SAGE was written in
machine language.
Hendrie: That was a question I had. Could we pause for just a second, and I'll get that question?
I had a question about what kind of software was available. Maybe going back to the Whirlwind,
were there any assemblers, or any math libraries? The development of standardized or reusable software
that would help people write their programs? And then maybe you could continue the comments into the
SAGE system.
Everett: Well, I can't recall all the details, but there were growing amounts of these things. At first, people
just sat down and wrote it. And then if one person could do a thousand instruction program, and keep it in
his head and get it right. But when you get twenty people for a fifty-thousand instruction program, that
won't work. So there were all kinds of things that were invented, and there were certainly standard subroutines
for various functions, that you could use. And there were assemblers, I guess you would call
them. The original SAGE program was written with, not instructions or something, but with the names of
the things you wanted. If you wanted some interceptor base, you could put it in the interceptor base. And
then the assembler line, the support line would just…programs would put them in the right places, and
things like that. So, it was called a Compool, which contained all that information. And people could go off
and write it, independent of where it'll end up, could write it. And then this thing came in, and they put it all
together and made sure it was all right. But it was not in a higher level language.
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