Alexey Pomigalov, Project Curator at DataArt IT Museum in St. Petersburg
More than 12 years ago, DataArt engineers began assembling their own museum of both rare and simply interesting obsolete computing devices. When all the materials collected at our St. Petersburg development center got large enough to hold more than one exhibition, and required professional cataloging, the museum project got its own curator. Alexey Pomigalov worked before as a researcher at the State Hermitage Museum and the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg, and was also responsible for collecting and cataloging the historical collection of Zenit Football Club.
Alexey shared ten interesting facts about Soviet computing technology that really blew his mind as a museum curator with no prior experience as a computer engineer.
1. The first computers made in the USSR
There were two computers that can be considered to be the first made in the USSR. The development team headed by Isaak Bruk and Bashir Rameev got the patent certificate for one of them. The second was made by the famous engineer Sergey Lebedev with support from the Academy of Sciences (Lebedev became an Academician after the computer was built). Both computer designs were developed in the late 1940s, and were first demonstrated publicly in 1951. It’s interesting that Bruk moved to Moscow from Minsk, and Lebedev came from Kiev, so both Belarus and Ukraine are part of this legacy, along with Russia.
2. War-trophy transistors
The M-1 electronic data processing machine (EVM), which was one of those first two Soviet computers, used transistors taken from Germany as part of WWII reparations, and sent to the Academy of Science’s special warehouses.
3. Blacking out the neighborhood when you turn on the computer
When MESM (the first universally programmable electronic computer in the Soviet Union) was first launched in Feofania (Kiev), electricity got blacked out to an entire city district. The power required to run the first computer systems was just off the chart. The institute itself was housed in the building of a former hospital in the Feofania Park, and had no special electric power capacities of its own.
4. A clone, a copy, or a genuine development?
The main stumbling block of Soviet computer development was the ES EVM series of mainframes. Was it a good thing that production of this series was launched with IBM System 360 architecture, or did this cloning cripple domestic computer development? Each IT historian has his or her own arguments, and each one has their own reservations as well. Whatever side you’re on, this issue clearly divides everyone into two camps.
5. A huge variety of architectures and solutions
The Soviet computer universe was endless. Even with the introduction of a unified series, each area came up with its own architecture, and almost every research institute had its own computer. The military had dozens, if not hundreds, of different computers. That said, developers didn’t always communicate with each other, and the centrally planned economy didn’t allow the system to prevent repeated inventions. Not to mention how many things were classified, and how many other parts were in short supply.
6. Accidental declassification
The first personal computer in the Soviet Union was apparently an accident ― a batch of Soviet clones of the i8080 microprocessor was mistakenly delivered to MIEM (the Moscow Institute of Economics and Mathematics), and the young people who worked there built a working system on this microprocessor, then published their work in Radio magazine.
7. “A personal computer ― that’s fantasy!”
As the USSR Deputy Minister of Radio Industry N.V. Gorshkov said in 1980 to developers of the Micro-80 DIY computer, “A car, a summer house, and a pension can be personal, but computers should be 100 square meters in size, with 25 employees and 30 liters of cleaning spirits per month.” Yet just two years later, factory production of “Agate” personal computers was started. These machines were made using developments by the Scientific Research Institute of Computer Complexes that implemented architectural solutions of the Apple II Plus computer.
8. Shifting to personal computers
Organizations that had EVM computers on their balance sheet began returning them to the state in the early 1990s, and were thereby able to provide themselves with a sufficient (or almost sufficient) number of personal computers. The amount of gold in these computers sometimes reached 3 kg.
9. Hunting for gold
Unfortunately, the content of gold and other precious metals in old computers and hardware components, together with the economic and political situation of the 1990s in the countries of the former USSR, led to a situation where many computers and their hardware were stolen to be smelted for gold. As a result, part of the high-tech industrial heritage was lost.
10. Preservation of technological heritage
Along with gentrification of industrial buildings, many countries today are tending towards preservation of their industrial heritage — so-called “museumification” of equipment. The history of EVM computers is still very short, but even these machines already have a more than detailed legacy, not to mention the remarkable stories that stand behind each machine. But there’s an interesting trait of computer museums too — in almost all countries, large historical technological collections are located outside capital cities. Apparently, obsolete computers are routinely taken from the capitals to be placed in provincial collections. Furthermore, old and obsolete computer equipment was actively destroyed in all the former USSR republics: it took up a lot of space, required attention and, as we mentioned, was suitable for gold extraction. Therefore, it’s very important today for the modern engineering and cultural community not to lose the few machines that have survived from this legacy.