Oral History of Robert Everett - Computer History Museum

Oral History of Robert Everett
Everett: Jack's a very smart fellow. He did a lot of interesting things. That may be true, but I wasn't aware
of it. It wasn't a thing that SAGE needed, and there were all kinds of things, as I say, written by various
people because lots of people had access to the machine.
Hendrie: Can we talk a little bit about some of the testing that went on on SAGE, in terms of real-life
simulations or actual tests in the genre of the ICBM interceptor tests that are going on now? Was the
Cape Cod System the first system that actually tried to fly airplanes, and find them, and track them?
Everett: It was the first system that used a general purpose digital computer for that purpose. But of
course people had been using radar sets to shoot at airplanes for a long time. Well, yes – let me think of
what I was going to say here – would you say the question again?
Hendrie: Yes, we were talking about testing.
Everett: Testing.
Hendrie: Yes, real world testing.
Everett: The first thing was that there was extensive simulation. A lot of work was done to write programs
that would simulate the outside world, and which could see how the SAGE itself reacted to those things.
Secondly, in fact there was a room in the SAGE center for training and battle simulation. Then there were
real tests run all the time. The Air Force arranged to have the SAC [Strategic Air Command] people, the
SAC bombers which were flying all the time for training purposes, to come in and attack the SAGE system
in the northeast. And SAGE would track these airplanes and order interceptors out of the bases, and the
interceptors would go out and try to intercept the SAC bombers. And that took place every week for a
long, long time. And that gave you some real experience under real conditions because…
Hendrie: I assume lots of things were found…
Everett: Oh, lots of things were found.
Hendrie: …in the software.
Everett: Lots of things were found. And there were always a set of proposals for making things better,
which had to be winnowed.
Hendrie: I guess there wasn't enough time or money.
Everett: It was funny. I'll tell you another anecdote. There was Division II of Lincoln, which was run by Bob
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