From 1962 to 67 I was in Colorado Springs in charge of a small group who were charged with creating a periodic report on the performance of the BMEWS System.
NORAD was connected to the three BMEWS sites and was designed to receive data about missiles from Russia directed at the US. NORAD was located in a deep cave dug into nearby Cheyenne Mountain where it had a state of the art computer and state of the art big screen displays of any Russian activity – planes and missiles threatening friendly countries.
One day we office people got a tour of the complex. We saw the great computer (it was a Philco machine – Phil o was an old Philadelphia radio company then owned by Ford Motor, and we saw the great screen with projected data and as technical people we were impressed. Then we went for lunch. We were taken to a small room lined with vending machines (more like Horn and Hardart slot machines, but you probably don’t know about them). We were confused -here was an opening with Ice cream right next to one with a hamburger. How can that be? Oh wow – you cook the hamburger in a microwave. We never saw a microwave before! How exciting! But wait, we don’t have coins for the food machines. Oh wow – there’s a dollar bill changer. We’d never seen a bill changer before! The highlight of the day was not the great NORAD system, it was the lunch room
with its newfangled equipment!
Modern views
