 Mass production of modems in the United States began as part of the SAGE air-defense system in 1958 (the year the word "modem" was first used), connecting terminals at various airbases, radar sites, and command-and-control centers to the SAGE director centers scattered around the United States and Canada.SAGE modems were described by AT&T's Bell Labs as conforming to their newly published Bell 101 dataset standard.While they ran on dedicated telephone lines, the devices at each end were no different from commercial acoustically coupled Bell 101, 110 baud modems.