Facility Focus: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory

The explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb in August 1949, followed by the Soviet development of bombers that could traverse the Arctic Circle, created a significant new security threat to the United States. In response to this threat, the Department of Defense commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to take a leadership role in addressing this problem. The result was the establishment of MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1951 to design and develop the first air defense system for the United States. This system, designated the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), was pioneering in its complexity and required numerous inventions — including digital computers, magnetic-core memory, large-scale computer programs, modems, and interactive graphical user interfaces — in order to come into being.