| Notes |
While out of the public eye, Mitre’s history is remarkable. The nonprofit company was born out of the Cold War, spun out of perhaps the world’s most famous tech campus, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The MIT acronym provides Mitre the first half of its name). In the late 1950s, facing the threat of a Soviet nuclear strike, the U.S. Air Force called on MIT to help it create an air defense system that would help it detect incoming bombers. The institute came up with the Semi-Automated Ground Environment (SAGE). The system combined radar, radio and network communications to detect incoming enemy aircraft, alert and continually update nearby Air Force bases, which would scramble jets to intercept approaching threats. It was the first air defense system of its kind in America, and Mitre was founded by MIT administrators in 1958 to manage SAGE and its future development.
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