The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, was highly sophisticated for the late 1950s. Spanning the US and Canada, it was an air monitoring system that scanned the skies for Soviet bombers during the Cold War. For it to work, it needed to be able to select targets on the radar, which was a problem because the computer mouse had yet to be invented. Enter the “Light Gun,” a pistol-shaped device that operators would point on the screen to select targets for track identification, interception, or ground-to-air missile targeting. Read full article here
Research
Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable
The Gilgamesh Epic, the oldest work of world literature, has been brought back to life by LMU researchers in the Electronic Babylonian Literature project. Using their new Fragmentarium tool, they have discovered hundreds of manuscripts, including the most recent tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic which dates from 130 BC – thousands of years after the earliest known version. This shows how highly valued the Epic was, even at a late period. With the public release of the Fragmentarium, anyone can now explore the thousands of cuneiform fragments and explore the ancient Babylonian literature. Read full article here
Merv
March 12, 2023
