Mikhail Kartsev belongs to the category of scientists whose discoveries and contributions, for some incomprehensible reason, were fully acknowledged only after their death. The academic elite never presented Kartsev with any special awards or recognition for his work. Not until ten years after his death was the Moscow Scientific Research Institute of Computer Complexes [in Russian: Nauchno-Isledovatel'skii Institut Vuichislitel'nikh Kompleksov, or NIIVK], the institute that he himself had founded, renamed in his honor. Computer science and technology was his calling in life, bringing him both happiness and sorrow. He dedicated all of his time to it - at work, at home, and even on vacation.
His son Vladimir remembers:
Every time I think about my father, I remember him being completely immersed in his work. He had no hobbies to speak of, and if he had spare time, he preferred to read. Occasionally, we went to the movies. He never played sports, and was an active opponent of both dachas and cars. However, as he got older and began to experience leg pain, he purchased a Volga and fell in love with it. Learning how to drive at his age was difficult, but he knew Moscow's streets like the back of his hand and got around the city very well. My father never complained or discussed his problems. It was nearly impossible to get him to talk about the war. He lived in the future, not the past.
Mikhail Kartsev was born in Kiev on May 10, 1923. After his father died that same year, the family moved several times. Kartsev lived with his mother in Odessa and Kharkov, eventually moving back to Kiev in 1941, where he finished secondary school. In the summer of 1941, he was sent to Donbas to work on fortifications. In September, he was drafted into the Soviet army where he served until February 1947. During the Second World War, tank operator Kartsev fought in the south and southwestern areas of the Soviet Union, in the Northern Caucasus and on two Ukrainian fronts. He participated in the liberation of Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. The Soviet government awarded him a medal for bravery, the Red Star Order, and medals "For the Conquest of Budapest," and "For Victory over Germany." In November 1944, while still at the military front, he was accepted as a candidate for membership in the Communist Party of Soviet Union, and in May 1945 he became an active member.
After demobilization, Kartsev studied at the Moscow Energy Institute in the Radio-technology department. At the end of his third year he passed all examinations without ever attending any of the lectures. In 1950 – by then a 5th year student – he began working part-time at the Laboratory of Electrical Systems at the Academy of Sciences Power Engineering Institute, where he worked side-by-side with Brook developing the M-1. In 1952, he was appointed to the permanent position of junior scientific assistant. During the design phase of the M-2 computer, he demonstrated exceptional talent – his small team finished the machine in just one and half years (by comparison, the BESM took twice as long and was developed by a larger and much more experienced team). Although the M-2 was not as powerful as BESM, Kartsev called it as a "solid machine."
In 1957, the director of the Radio-Technology Institute, academician Alexander L'vovich Mints, asked Brook to design an electronic control computer for a new experimental radar-tracking complex. To be more exact, Brook accidentally initiated this process himself by bumping into Mints while on vacation at the Kislovodsk resort. While discussing the projects he was working on at his laboratory, Brook mentioned the possibility of using control computers for radar tracking. Together, they came up with a proposal and in 1957 the technical order for the M-4 computer was approved. Kartsev was appointed as the project manager, marking the beginning of his service in designing computer systems tailored for the use in early warning missile defense systems and space observation. At that time, these were the hardest problems to solve because they needed a large quantity of data to be processed. Plus, they demanded the highest calculation speeds, enormous memory, and highly reliable equipment.
In 1957 the first Soviet transistors were beginning to be mass-produced. Thus, Kartsev decided to base the M-4 design on semi-conductors.
For this project, Special Laboratory No. 2 was set-up under Kartsev's management at the newly founded Academy of Sciences Electronic Control Computer Institute. In March 1958, the government approved the draft for the M-4, and in April, the Soviet Cabinet of Ministers issued a special order for manufacturing the machine and assigned a factory already experienced in computer production to Kartsev's laboratory. In April 1958, Kartsev gave the completed construction blueprints to the factory and it began preparing for production; the M-4 designers were present during all stages of manufacturing and adjustment. In 1959, the factory finished the production phase of the two M-4 units and began their fine-tuning. By the end of 1960, the first complex was put into operation and was turned over to the Radio-Technology Institute.
In November 1962, the government issued an order to begin the mass-production of the M-4. However, Kartsev, backed by his team, proposed another new computer for mass-manufacturing. He wanted to eliminate the 'bugs' still present in the current model, hoping to make it more technically efficient during production and adjustment. At this time Kartsev's group had just developed a new system of logical elements using high frequency transistors that could make the units operate with greater speed. With the appearance of powerful transistors in the Soviet Union, vacuum tubes were no longer needed.
Kartsev and his team members completed the construction blueprints for the new M-4M very quickly. In March 1963, they delivered design plans for the computer's arithmetic unit to the factory and in August of the same year they finished the rest of the plans for the overall machine design. Exactly one year later, the factory completed the first two models of the computer. The M-4M's adjustment and interface matching required only two months. In October 1964, both models passed technical tests and were accepted by their purchasers. Instead of just meeting the original requirement of one hundred thousand operation per second, the M-4M performed at two hundred twenty thousand operations per second. The computer was technically advanced and required practically no calibrating. The M-4M continued to be manufactured up to 1985; several hundred of them were built.
The M-4M series was eventually produced in three models, designated 5E71, 5E72, 5E73. All differed in operational storage volume. To enhance their capabilities, remote systems AS-1, AS-2, AS-3, etc and an external calculator 5E79, were developed. With the M-4Ms functioning as the base, multi-computer complexes were built and connected in a powerful computer network that operated in real time.
Kartsev recalled this period with excitement and pride:
25 years ago, in 1957, one of the first Soviet transistor computers that worked in real time – the M-4 - began its development.
In November 1962, the government issued an order to mass-produce the M-4. However, we clearly understood that this type of computer would not be easy to mass-manufacture because its design was based on transistors and it would be difficult to calibrate. We were fortunate though, that during the period from 1957 to 1962, semiconductor technology took a gigantic leap forward, allowing us to build a machine that would be much better than the M-4 plus more powerful than any computer produced in the Soviet Union up to that point. During the winter of 1962–1963 we argued continuously with the Electronic Control Computer Institute because they were firmly against the development of a new machine. They claimed that we would never finish it in the allotted time, it was a huge gamble, and the project would surely fail.
The Military-Industrial Commission of the Presidium of the Soviet Cabinet Ministers resolved the argument in our favor in March 1963. That same month we gave the prepared design plans for the computer's arithmetic unit to a factory managed by V.A. Kurochkin. In August 1963 we finished all of the design plans and one year later the factory completed the first two working models of the computer, ready for adjustment. In October 1964 the first two models were delivered to their customers, and in December 1964 the factory completed five more M-4Ms. These computers were manufactured for over 15 years and are still operating.
Kartsev completed a doctoral dissertation based on his M-4M work, and in 1967 was awarded the State Prize of the Soviet Union.