The amusing thing is that those angled panels with lots of blinking lights that show up in so many movies are not the computer itself, or even its control or maintenance panels. Those are the modems for talking to remote sites.
They're available for rental from Woody's Props in North Hollywood.[1]
Some of the battle consoles and computer consoles with big round screens can be seen at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, CA.
Here's what seems to be the best description of what SAGE actually did.[2]
For comparison, here's a rarely seen WWII film: "Secrets of the Filter Room".[2]
This shows a WWII manual tracking center, with dozens of people with headsets frantically updating a map of what's going on, while others in a balcony look at the map and make tactical decisions. Such centers appear in other movies, such as "Battle of Britain", but usually in simplified form. This one explains in detail how the room worked. You can see how they've hit the limits of what could be done with human map updating. There's no more room for more people around the map table, and they're already in each other's way.
The basic constraint of WWII air defense - fighters could not stay up for very long.
Spitfires had fuel for maybe 20 minutes once they found the enemy.
They had to be launched when the enemy was in range, and guided to the enemy by ground control, or they'd be forced to land to refuel without ever finding the enemy, accomplishing nothing. Thus these insanely complex manual ground control systems. Air Marshall Dowdling came up with the system. Winning the Battle of Britain required both the heroes in the air and the system on the ground.
Animats•2mo ago
They're available for rental from Woody's Props in North Hollywood.[1]
Some of the battle consoles and computer consoles with big round screens can be seen at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, CA.
Here's what seems to be the best description of what SAGE actually did.[2]
For comparison, here's a rarely seen WWII film: "Secrets of the Filter Room".[2] This shows a WWII manual tracking center, with dozens of people with headsets frantically updating a map of what's going on, while others in a balcony look at the map and make tactical decisions. Such centers appear in other movies, such as "Battle of Britain", but usually in simplified form. This one explains in detail how the room worked. You can see how they've hit the limits of what could be done with human map updating. There's no more room for more people around the map table, and they're already in each other's way.
The basic constraint of WWII air defense - fighters could not stay up for very long. Spitfires had fuel for maybe 20 minutes once they found the enemy. They had to be launched when the enemy was in range, and guided to the enemy by ground control, or they'd be forced to land to refuel without ever finding the enemy, accomplishing nothing. Thus these insanely complex manual ground control systems. Air Marshall Dowdling came up with the system. Winning the Battle of Britain required both the heroes in the air and the system on the ground.
SAGE was the first mechanization of all that.
[1] https://woodysprops.com/item.php?uid=122&page=4
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06drBN8nlWg
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGwUn07EHmg