Cambridge was bursting its intellectual seams in 1949. The war was over, the Rad Lab crew had scattered, Norbert Weiner and Claude Shannon were blowing more than a few minds, Bob Noyce was dropping jaws at MIT with talk of transistors, the words digital and computer were being uttered side by side in the same sentence, and the Wursthaus was packing 'em in for good beer on the cheap, sausage, and algorithms scribbled on paper napkins. Something was in the air.

The first B-17 landed at Langley Field on March 1, 1937. Bomber supremacists basked in its gleeming invincibility. Airmen like Chennault and Saville were not amused and saw vital proof of the opposite in air raids over Guernica and Barcelona. Enemy weather, enemy flak, Bf109s and targets like Schweinfurt on "Bloody Thursday" were sobering realizations on how not to go to war in a Flying Fortress. In the stark light of a bomber's moon the real answers would eventually arise.

Early "Digerati"

In the 1950s, they were all young--or mostly so. Ones and zeros were real important to them. But their incredible string of digital 'firsts' meant little. What really mattered was making computers actually do a job. And to make that happen together as a team--as the bright boys!--was their high. Especially whenever the team pulled off a digital feat that experts deemed impossible to do at all.

Real-time Command & Control

They were asked to create the air defense over North America, which they did. Keeping Soviet planes and hydrogen bombs at bay for a generation or more. And as an unintended bonus, the bright boys spun out the military's most elusive prize: real-time command and control. Smart munitions, smart aircraft , and smart tactics--the "Shock & Awe" over Baghdad--had its first glimmers courtesy of the smarties in the Barta Building in 1950.

A technologically enlightened military since its founding as the Army Air Corps, the Air Force has attracted many of America's best to its "footless halls of space." In the mid-1930s, two of them, Saville and Chennault, invented command and control. Years later as a general, Saville would get the bright boys to put the "real-time" into it. In exchange, the Air Force jumped in up to its chin to back the bright boys, anted up the cash and the nerve, and then rode its big investment literally to the stars.

What is it? After more than 50 years, people are still trying to define it properly. But if you want to send an ICBM to Moscow or put a man on the Moon inter alia, then you better know it inside and out. The bright boys invented it as a tool to do their job. And the rest of the world filched it to do theirs. Systems engineering is now the quintessential competency for every well-schooled, high-tech engineer.