Years ago I was in the Smithsonian American History Museum in DC, looking through the computer tech display, and there was an exhibit about something called "SAGE" or "Semi-Automatic Ground Environment". This was the massive integrated air defense system for North America, which involved the use of gigantic IBM AN/FSQ-7 computers to process data from radar sites and direct fighters and surface-to-air weapons in the event of a Soviet bomber attack. The computers used thousands of vacuum tubes and there were dedicated cooling towers to keep the processors cool. These machines were all networked via hundreds of phone lines and modems. And this was in the 1950s!
I am no warmonger, but I love this old technology, and the audacity to think such a thing could be accomplished when nothing like it had ever been dreamed of before. Was the system effective? We'll never know, thankfully. Other nations' later attempts at integrated air defense met with mixed results (eg. North Vietnam, Egypt, ect.). But this was built from scratch and represents a landmark in systems engineering history.
I am no warmonger, but I love this old technology, and the audacity to think such a thing could be accomplished when nothing like it had ever been dreamed of before. Was the system effective? We'll never know, thankfully. Other nations' later attempts at integrated air defense met with mixed results (eg. North Vietnam, Egypt, ect.). But this was built from scratch and represents a landmark in systems engineering history.