How SAGE jumpstarted today’s technology and built IBM into a powerhouse. //

IBM had recently entered the computing realm in the early 1950s, and it was already dominant in punch-card tabulating. With its emphasis on research and development and customer support, IBM was chosen by the Air Force in 1953 to design and construct the AN/FSQ-7 systems. While the project contributed about 10 percent to IBM’s bottom line for several years, the real benefit to IBM was access to the advanced designs at MIT and to revolutionary technologies such as core memory. As the SAGE project wound down, IBM engineers used their accumulated skills and applied them to the newer commercial offerings for years afterward.

While flying on airlines today has its own unique set of hassles, actually booking a flight is (relatively) painless. This wasn’t so in the 1950s, when schedulers went through racks of index cards, each with a particular flight’s info, all stored in what resembled a library card catalog. Only a few schedulers could fit around the card catalogs, and making a flight reservation could take an hour or two. Through a chance encounter, an IBM executive met the president of American Airlines, and they discussed how the airline needs paralleled the capabilities of SAGE. Recognizing the competitive advantages of a computerized reservation system, American contracted with IBM to develop SABRE. SABRE quickly became a huge success and through multiple corporate reorganizations now operates now as Travelocity and Expedia.