North Atlantic Radio System

In the early 1950s arctic surroundings and weather conditions of northern Canada made construction and manning of HF and VHF radio or microwave relay stations almost impossible.

The undersea cable system however appeared to be unreliable being cut many times by trawlers and icebergs so a better data transfersystem was definitely needed.

SAGE consisted of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area.

Each set consisted of 2 transmitters and 4 receivers, for redundancy and to boost signal to noise ratios, using vacuum tube technology which proved time-consuming to maintain at high levels of efficiency.

Levels of service proved extremely variable with the effects of weather and finicky equipment frequently causing loss of connection.