The MESM was initially planned by Lebedev to serve as a model for the BESM. At first, MESM was even considered the model electronic computing machine. But, in the process of its creation, it became obvious that in comparison it was already a small computer. Because of it, input-output units were added, along with increased memory capacity on a magnetic drum, and the word "model" was changed to "small."
Given Kiev's war-torn condition, the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was faced with the challenge of where to allow the construction of the machine.
But the most difficult part of the whole project was the actual construction of MESM. I believe that it was simply Sergei Alexeevich's comprehensive experience from previous research that allowed him to cope so brilliantly with the technical aspects of computer building principles. Yet, one crucial miscalculation was made. The MESM had been placed on the ground floor of the two-story building where the Academy of Sciences allowed Lebedev to locate the laboratory. When the unit was assembled and the power turned on, its six thousand vacuum tubes turned the premises into a sauna. Workers had to remove parts of the ceiling in order to deflect some of the heat from the room.
Led by Lebedev and his main assistants, Candidates of Science Lev Naumovich Dashevsky and Ekaterina Alexeevna Shkabara, together with a team of twenty five engineers, technicians and assembly workers, all took an active part in designing, assembling, adjusting and operating the MESM.
Dashevsky and Shkabara later recalled how Lebedev interacted with the team at every stage of the project. When the machine found an error in the computations of two very distinguished mathematicians, he personally offered to check their hand calculations to 9 places, locking himself away for an entire day of painstaking work. He reappeared the following day, with his glasses askew (a sign of success) and a rare smile on his face, saying: "Don't torment the machine. It's correct. It's the people who are wrong." He had found a mistake, duplicated in the hand calculations.
At the end of 1951, an impressive group of scientists from the USSR Academy of Sciences came to Feofania from Moscow to commission the MESM for operation. [5] The group was headed by Academician Mstislav V. Keldysh. In the group were the academicians Sergei L. Sobolev, Mikhail A. Lavrentiev, and Professors K.A. Semendayev and A.G. Kurosh.
When the word got out that there was an operating computer in the Ukraine, a steady parade of scientists from Kiev and Moscow headed to Feofania with scientific and defense-related problems that could not be solved without the aid of a computer. MESM began to work around the clock to help solve the most important problems of that period.
On January 4, 1952, Lebedev presented his report on MESM to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Later that year, after Lebedev had moved to Moscow, the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Science of Ukraine nominated the MESM project for the Soviet Union's State Prize. Lebedev, Dashevsky and Shkabara were listed as the leaders of the MESM team, and they undoubtedly deserved the prize: a large portion of the computing principles developed by Lebedev are still employed in modern computer technology. In 1950, when the model of MESM had been tested, the only other similar working machines were Frederick Williams and Tom Kilburn's Baby and Maurice Wilkes' EDSAC in England.
However, each British computer employed a sequential operational arithmetic unit, while MESM worked on parallel arithmetic units.
The Committee on State Prizes had to recognize that in 1952 MESM was practically the only computer in the country that was solving the most important scientific and technological problems from the fields of thermonuclear weapons processes (such as Yakov B. Zeldovich's work), space flights and rocket technology, long-distance electric transmission lines, mechanics, statistical quality control, and others. The following document is one of many that testifies to the importance and originality of the MESM:
TOP SECRETThe Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Department of Applied Mathematics The V.A. Steklov Mathematics Institute November 26, 1953, N 438 To the Director of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electric Power Engineering, Member-correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine S.S.R., A.D. Nesterenko: The Board of Directors of the Department of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, V.A. Steklov Mathematics Institute expresses many thanks to the Ukraine SSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electric Power Engineering for its participation in the great and important computer-calculation work carried out from November 1952 through July 1953 on a small electronic computer (MESM) designed by academician S.A. Lebedev. During this period the scientific group of the USSR Academy of Sciences Mathematics Institute under the direction of academician A.A. Dorodnitsyn and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, A.A. Lyapunov, in collaboration with the scientific team of Laboratory No. 1 of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electric Power Engineering (supervised by academician S.A. Lebedev) performed time consuming and painstaking calculations for three complex programs, carrying out nearly 50 million operations on the computer. We would also like to highlight the meticulous and conscientious work of the following scientists: Deputy of Laboratory Director, L.N. Dashevsky, Chief Engineer, R.Y. Cherniak; Engineers A.L. Gladish, E.E. Dedeshko, I.P. Okulova, T.I. Petsukh and S.B. Pogrebinsky and Technicians U.S. Mozipa, S.B. Rosenzweig and A.G. Semenovsky. These co-workers selflessly dedicated countless hours and expanded monumental effort to guarantee a high-quality trouble-free operation of the machine. Director of the Department of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences Mathematics Institute, Academician M.V. Keldysh. |
But Lebedev and his team failed to receive the State Prize. This was the first, but not the last time when the importance of the Lebedev's contribution in the formation and development of computer technology was not properly appreciated.
Unfortunately, the Board of Directors of the Ukraine Academy of Sciences, which at the time was headed by a biologist, did not understand or perhaps did not even attempt to understand the significance of Lebedev's work. The Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Ivan Dmitrievich Nazarenko, who visited Lebedev's laboratory in the end of 1950, failed to properly endorse Lebedev's work either. After familiarizing himself with the capabilities of the MESM and the prospects for the advancement and application of computer technology, he expressed his surprise and delight in one word: "Sorcery!" Leaving the laboratory, Nazarenko told Lebedev that he would expect proposals for further development of the project.
Having heard over the course of a week about Lebedev's project, the Presidium of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party asking for only modest support to continue computer research. This lack of action, along with the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the Ukrainian government's failure to comprehend and properly evaluate the significance of computer technology, continued for the next ten years, until the appearance of Victor Glushkov. A quote taken from a letter sent to the Central Committee of Ukrainian Communist Party in 1956 by Lebedev's former laboratory co-workers confirmed this state of affairs: "The position that our Republic has taken regarding computer technology is equivalent to a crime against the State." The author of this book was among those who signed this letter. Ukraine's chance to assume a leading role in the most important field of science and technology of the twentieth century was lost.
Mikhail Alexeevich Lavrentiev, a vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Science and Director of the Mathematics Institute at the time, understood the significance of Lebedev's work and his own complicated position. He wrote to Stalin about the need to accelerate research in the field of computer technology and the great prospects for computer usage, including national security purposes. The result was quite unexpected for the mathematician Lavrentiev: in 1951 he was appointed as the director of the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology in Moscow, which by the summer of 1948 had already been selected by the government to develop modern computing technology.
Lavrentiev decided to capitalize on Lebedev's experience. Lebedev had already demonstrated his creative possibilities, conceiving and drafting provisional schemata and diagrams for the BESM. In March of 1951, Lavrentiev established Laboratory No. 1 at the Institute for Precision Mechanics and asked Lebedev to head it. Thus BESM, although initially planned as a prototype in Kiev, was constructed in Moscow.
Lebedev dedicated a short article, "At the Cradle of the First Computer," to Lavrentiev on his 70th birthday, praising him for his role in the creation of both the MESM and BESM.
Lebedev wrote:
During the early postwar years I worked in Kiev. I had recently been selected as an academician of the Academy of Science of Ukraine, when the laboratory was created in the Kiev suburb of Feofania where the first Soviet computer would be born. That was a difficult time. The country had to rebuild a war-devastated economy. Every small issue became a big problem. The first Soviet computer may not have appeared in Feofania if not for the kind patronage of M.A. Lavrentiev, who at the time was Vice-President of the Ukrainian Academy of Science. Even now, I never cease to be amazed and delighted by that inexhaustible energy with which Lavrentiev defended and promoted his ideas. In my opinion, it would be difficult to find a person who, after meeting Lavrentiev, would not have been infected by his enthusiasm. Mikhail Alexeevich was appointed to be the Director of the ASUSSR Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology. I was also transferred to Moscow and we began our collaboration to create the big digital electronic computers. When the machine –BESM – was ready, it was in no way inferior to the latest American models and appeared to be a genuine triumph of the ideas of its creators.
After MESM was completed, Zinovy Lvovich Rabinovich began leading the design work for a specialized computer, the Specialized Electronic Calculating Machine [in Russian: Spetsialnaya Elektronnaya Shetnaya Mashina, or SESM], for solving sets of algebraic equations. Lebedev's ideas were the basic principles for the construction of this machine. The SESM was Lebedev's last project in Ukraine, but both it and MESM paved the way for many task-specific specialized computers. After Lebedev transferred to Moscow, his students Dashevsky, Shkabara, Pogrebinsky, and others who stayed behind in Ukraine, began developing a new computer, the Kiev. Even though the Kiev's operational features were inferior to Lebedev's new M-20 computer, it was still state-of-the-art at that time.
In 1958 Viktor Glushkov became head of Lebedev's former laboratory and the Kiev was completed under his supervision. Later, the machine was employed for a long time at the Academy of Sciences Computing Center, where a computer laboratory had been established. The Computing Center was eventually reorganized as the Cybernetics Institute; it is now renamed after its founder, Glushkov.
Speaking at the Academy of Sciences Scientific Council of the Cybernetics Institute on the twenty-fifth anniversary of MESM's creation, Glushkov acknowledged the significance of the MESM in the development of computer technology in Ukraine and throughout the Soviet Union:
Independent of foreign scientists, S.A. Lebedev developed the principles for building a stored memory program computer.[6] Under his supervision the first computer in Europe was created. It was capable of solving the most important scientific and technical problems, which led to the foundation of the Soviet programming school.
Lebedev's service to Ukrainian science has been well commemorated. A street in Kiev has been named after him, and the Academy of Sciences has set up a contest in his honor. The first winners of the Lebedev Prize in Computer Science were Mikhail A. Lavrentiev, Vladimir Andreevich Melnikov, Zinovy Rabinovich, and the author of this book. In Kiev, at the entrance of the Electrical Power Engineering Institute building where Lebedev was a director, a memorial plaque has been placed in his honor. Speaking at the dedication of the memorial, President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, academician Boris E. Paton remarked:
We will always be proud of the fact that it was at Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, in our dear Kiev, where Lebedev—a distinguished scientist in the fields of computer technology, mathematics and large automated systems, first thrived. He pioneered the creation of the outstanding school of Computer Science in Kiev; his torch was later taken up by V.M. Glushkov. Today, we have the Glushkov Cybernetics Institute, one of the foremost and largest computer institutes in the world.
Lebedev lived and worked during a period of the vigorous development of such branches of science as electronics, computer technology, missiles, and the mastery of outer space and atomic energy. Patriotically, Sergei Alexeevich took a part in the largest projects with I.V. Kurchatov, S.P. Korolev and mathematician M.V. Keldysh, guaranteeing the creation of a shield for the Motherland.[7] The role of the electronic computers created by Sergei Alexeevich in carrying out these projects was, without exaggeration, of enormous importance. His name stands tall in the ranks of the great scientists of the world.
[5] Author's Note: Feofania was the site of the famous St. Panteleimon "The Healer" Monastery.
[6] Author's Note: The American scientist John von Neumann's 1946 publications on computer building principles did not appear in the open press of the Soviet Union until the 1950s.
[7] Editor's Note: Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov was scientific director of the Soviet atomic bomb project, while his contemporary Sergei P. Korolev was scientific head of the Soviet Space Program. In the Cold War, "The shield of the Motherland" was a commonly used expression for the anti-rocket and anti-aircraft defense systems that protected the Soviet Union.