 He worked on numerous projects around the Whirlwind secret room of the Cape Cod System SAGE air defense system and at the Eglin Air Force Base ERA 1103.Around 1954 Ross wrote the first hand-drawn graphics input program to a computer.He stated it was "One of the few programs that I ever wrote that worked the first time" The Air Force was interested in continuing beyond MIT's Numerical Control Projects objective of standardizing the control of machine tools.