Popular culture got an eyeful of SAGE when Holly-wood went ga-ga over its mammoth hardware, bulg-ing cabinetry and flashing lights. No fewer than 34 Hollywood movies and TV programs utilized chunks of SAGE as backdrops and props.

What the public’s imagination perceived as to what a computer should look like and how it should act was totally SAGE transplanted to the sets of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Fantastic Voyage, Batman, and Independence Day; even comedies got into the act with Spaceballs, Get Smart, Austin Powers, and Woody Allen’s Sleeper.

That’s a span of forty-plus years of SAGE in Hollywood. SAGE’s whirring, flashing racks of iron became the obligatory standard for anyone contemplating the design of a backdrop for any sci-fi or even remotely futuristic movie or TV show.

What a hoot it was for any bright boy at a movie theatre or in front of a TV set to witness Holly-wood’s best cavorting with their much-maligned machine: the “big boondoggle” in the Barta Building.

SAGE became a computer hero! No telling how many times it averted disaster for the world or how many millions of lives it saved all in pursuit of big screen storytelling. SAGE’s name never appeared in the film credits, but it was nevertheless up in lights on the silver screen.

A much weightier venue, the 1996 presidential campaign, also used a SAGE backdrop. The then-famous computer with decades of screen appearances was added to lend some high-tech credibility to the World News Tonight stage set. ABC News carted in pieces to sit behind newscasters Peter Jennings and David Brinkley as they speculated on the Clinton-Dole returns.

More of SAGE in Hollywood can be found here CLICK