SAGE & Babbage

Here’s a photo of Dad standing in front of the control console and some banks of hardware from the SAGE system at the Computer History Museum last weekend:

You can’t see the cigarette lighter on the console, which is a feature Apple somehow never puts in its iMacs.

Dad says he contributed to the SAGE project in some capacity back in the day, I guess on the software end. Whenever I hear about the SAGE project it always sounds like this big boondoggle which was obsolete by the time it was deployed, but nonetheless was maintained for decades thereafter.

Here I am in front of one of two completed versions of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, also at the museum:

Unfortunately it wasn’t in operation when we were there. It’s a very impressive aggregation of metal, though; I can see why Babbage was unable to complete it in his own era.