# SAGE SYSTEM TRAINING PROGRAM COLD WAR EARLY WARNING SYSTEM 78864

This film shows the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment or SAGE, a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s. The processing power behind SAGE was supplied by the largest computer ever built, the AN/FSQ-7. Each SAGE Direction Center (DC) housed an FSQ-7 which occupied an entire floor, approximately 22,000 square feet, of the massive concrete blockhouse, not including supporting equipment. The upper two floors contained offices, operator stations, and a single two-story radar display visible to most of the DC's personnel. Information was fed to the DC's from a network of radar stations as well as readiness information from various defence sites. The computers, based on the raw radar data, developed "tracks" for the reported targets, and automatically calculated which defences were within range. Subsets of the data were then sent to the many operator consoles, where the operators used light guns to select targets onscreen for further information, select one of the available defences, and issue commands to attack. These commands would then be automatically sent to the defence site via teleprinter. Connecting the various sites was an enormous network of telephones, modems and teleprinters. SAGE became…

- Kind: Film
- Genres: War, Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/78864SageSystemTrainingProgram)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/78864SageSystemTrainingProgram?play=1)