SAGE!

Is It An Owl?  Is It A Herb? Is It A Wise Old Man?
Answer: None of the above.  NO!  It's not a wise woman either.  Stop being silly.
     I suppose I've cheated a bit*.  There are full stops in there to create an acronym: S.A.G.E.
     No, not the owl from "The Herbs"  - Art?

What it's not

     I loved that programme.  Which is perhaps a little too much information.  Er - moving on, it doesn't refer to the herb, either.  Art?

Again what it's not, in a pot

     And we're not talking about a wise old man.  Art?

Both wise and old.  A winning combination
(Handsome comes a distant third)

      "Thank you for skipping around the edges of the topic, Conrad.  Would you mind enlightening us so we can go finish watching Eurovision?" I hear you chide.
     Okay.  S.A.G.E. means "Semi Automatic Ground Environment", which was the gestalt of South Canadian strategic defence warning systems from the mid-Fifties until the later Eighties.  All the input from radar stations across the CONUS was fed into the network, to create SAGE.  Which could probably be run by your old phone of yesteryear with plenty of RAM to spare. Art?

Plotting the SAGE plotters

     Although at the time it was very hi-tec indeed.  Recall, if you can, Conrad blabbing on about "Doctor Strangelove", for the technology at Burpleson AFB is SAGE-level stuff.  Art?

World's deadliest whack-a-mole game ...

     Remember that we're talking valve technology when SAGE arrived.  Plus, as in the photo above, it must be cool to be able to tell folks that using a "light gun" is part of your job description.  Though then you would, I'm afraid, have to kill them.

No!  Not an ACME Meat Thermometer.  A light gun.

     So there you have it:  SAGE, progressing from valves to transistors to micro-processors, whilst not blowing up the planet.

 - And Back To That Crossword Mention
I'm not going to apologise for leaving you in the lurch with that posting about crosswords in today's afternoon post.  Firstly, because - as you ought to know full well by now - I am Evil Present In A Six-Foot Suit, and secondly, because I'd hit the word count total.  
     I was perturbed about the clue "Turk returning without an apposite phrase", 5 letters, consisting of "M_P_O".  Of course you're streets ahead of me here, the answer is actually "MOTTO" which meant I'd got 2 Down wrong, meaning it wasn't "PAPER".  It turned out to be "PETER", which I figured out.

I hope you get it.

     "Yes, yes, Conrad, it's very enlightening, yet - Eurovision?" I hear you expostulate.  Hey, I know what Eurovision's like, I'm doing you a favour here.
     The point I was making is that it's sometimes necessary to take a break from Activity Whatever, allow your mind to break out of the loop and move on.
     Also I wanted to get a bit of gloasting in.  

Conrad.  If not "on fire" then at least smouldering gently

Shhhh!
I have written out "Just seen -" when this was actually Friday morning.  You might think this is needlessly pedantic**, and it would make no difference to the blog apart from increasing the word count a little*, except Conrad wants to earn and retain the trust of you the reader, so I'm being honest.  And upping the word count <added in by Mister Hand***>
     Okay, veering back on topic, on Friday morning I saw a bus poster shrieking in big bold print "X-MEN APOCALYPSE".  You can't accuse them of underselling, can you?  I hope you also appreciate the lengths I went to amend the font there.  
     Conrad - that's me, in case there's any doubt as to who's posting and typing here - frankly grows bored of all this Hollywood hype and bluster.  Hello, Californian suits, kindly adopt a more muted English approach to films.  Like -

PROFESSOR XAVIER MAKES A CUP OF TEA!

COLOSSUS GETS A SPOT OF RUST

X-MEN: THE WEEKLY SHOPPING TRIP

WOLVERINE HAS A HAIRCUT AND MANICURE

Okay, okay, perhaps the manicure is pushing the boundaries a tad.  And the Prof. X one might be a short, or a short-short, as even Conrad The Tea Snob can manage a decent pot of tea in ten minutes or less.

Valves, Transistors And Micro-processors
Today's generations of young folk will have absolutely NO comprehension of what this technology is or was, much like the slide-rule is now a forgotten tool.  Briefly put, electronic equipment up to the late Fifties utilised Valves, which were large, delicate and glass.  Art?

A variety of valves, verily

     These were constructed thus:

I hope you're taking notes here.

     In the Sixties they were replaced by the transistor, which swept in on the back of Japanese transistor radios, far far smaller than the cupboard-sized radios (a.k.a. "wireless") used prior.  Art?

Compare and contrast

     And then we have what that revered British drama-mentary "Doctor Who" described as "micro-monolithic circuits", or integrated circuitry.  Art?

Impressively small

     I think Conrad is just an old, reactionary dinosaur but I do deplore just a bit* the decease of those lovely artistic vacuum tubes in the face of the soul-less micro-processor.

Are we at count yet?

Oops, well over!  Pip pip old sports, see you tomorrow!

*  Okay a lot
** Conrad - a hairsplitting over-analytical detail-ridden obsessive?  Never!
*** Damn that hand!  If only I wasn't so attached to him ...