This talk outlines the history of the Whirlwind computer, designed at MIT in the 1950's, and used as the prototype for the SAGE system, defending the continental US against the new threat posed by over-the-pole bomber squadrons.

Computers, Military, Museums, Policy, Software, Technology, War Guy C. Fedorkow received his BASc and MASc in Engineering Sciences at University of Toronto, and went on to develop both communications and high-throughput parallel computer architectures at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, MA, Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, where he has served as system architect for a number of communications products. Guy’s work currently includes infrastructure security and trusted computing topics at Juniper Networks, the Trusted Computing Group and IETF. In addition, Guy works on history-of-computing in collaboration with colleagues at the MIT Museum and at the Computer History Museum. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx