The Origins of the Santa Tracker: A Typo and a Secret Phone Call

The Accidental Birth of a Holiday Tradition

In the early days of the Cold War, a group of computer programmers at the US Air Force’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) in North Dakota were tasked with developing a system to track and predict the trajectories of Soviet ICBMs. Among them was a young programmer named Don Bitzer, who would later become a key figure in the creation of the Santa Tracker tradition.

A Typo and a Mysterious Phone Call

One day, while working on a project, Bitzer made a typo that led to an unexpected result: the system began displaying the names of cities around the world instead of missile trajectories. When a colleague called a top-secret phone number to report the issue, he was surprised to receive a response from a mysterious voice that seemed to be coming from a government agency.

The Birth of SCS

The incident sparked an idea in Bitzer’s mind: what if they could use this system to track Santa Claus’s journey around the world on Christmas Eve? He enlisted the help of his colleagues, and together they created a program that would display a map of the globe with Santa’s location marked by a red dot. This was the birth of the SCS (Santa Claus System), which would later become known as the Santa Tracker.

The First Broadcast

On Christmas Eve in 1955, the SCS system went live for the first time, and Don Bitzer’s team began broadcasting Santa’s location to the public through a series of radio broadcasts. The program was an instant hit, with children and families tuning in from all over the world to track Santa’s journey.

A Holiday Tradition is Born

The success of the SCS system led to its adoption by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), which took over the operation of the tracker in 1958. Today, the Santa Tracker remains a beloved holiday tradition, with millions of people around the world tuning in each year to follow Santa’s journey on Christmas Eve.