Outstanding Talent

During a business trip to Moscow in 1954, I visited the special construction bureau SKB-245 of the Machine and Instrument Building Ministry. In those days, it was one of the most well known organizations that developed computers. Since the purpose of my visit was to learn about the latest projects, I was able to see the big room where the Ural-1 computer was being assembled and got to meet the leader of the project, Bashir Rameev.

I had heard of him before and knew that he was one of the designers of the new Strela computer. He was young and handsome, of medium height and slim build; he wore glasses. He was a quiet person and spoke with very little emotion. As I stood next to him, I realized that even though we were roughly the same age, his life and professional experiences had been much more profound than mine.

That was the beginning of our acquaintance. In later years, when Rameev worked in the city of Penza near the Ural Mountains' region, I saw him occasionally at national computer conferences where specialists gathered from all over the Soviet Union.

From what I remember, Rameev's name was not on the list of esteemed conference speakers. Fortunately, this didn't diminish his prestige because he managed the highly reputable Penza scientific school, which was renowned for its huge creative output in the development and manufacturing of general-purpose computers. In those days, one out of every two computers in the country was made in Penza. While Lebedev and his Moscow group worked on development and manufacturing of supercomputers, provincial Penza developed and mass-produced "ordinary," all-purpose computers.

Over the years, I came to know the extraordinary, very modest and talented Rameev very well.

Rameev avoided contact with journalists and newspaper reporters and in fact, tried to eliminate all publicity about his work; very few articles about him or his work were ever published. That is why only a few specialists knew that Rameev and Brook developed the Soviet digital electronic computer M-1 and received an invention certificate for its common bus, or that Rameev had been Deputy Senior Constructor of the Strela, the first mass-produced computer. He was also the first to develop the principle of hardware and software compatibility, implementing it in the family of computers designed under his management. Like Lebedev, Rameev devoted his life to computer development, and the results of his work are comparable to the best foreign achievements of that time. Because he was a "son of an enemy of the people" he was dismissed from his institute in 1938 and was not able to receive a higher education. Nevertheless, owing to his extraordinary talent, he became Chief Constructor of the Ural series of universal computers, which were named in memory of the place where he grew up.

In one of the newspapers issued at the Penza Institute where Rameev worked, some of his colleagues complained about their manager's introversion, quoting him: "It is easier for me to make a new computer than to stand at a podium and give a speech!"

Indeed, he hardly ever spoke at conferences or large meetings; but the results of his research always showed up in technical reports, operational documentation for manufacturing computers, in computers themselves, and through the accomplishments of organizations that used the Ural computers in the 1960s and 1970s.

Because of his efforts, Penza became the cradle of rigorous scientific training in the field of universal digital machines. At the end of the 1960s, when the third generation computers were in their planning stage, Rameev had every reason to count on the Penza school taking the leading role in the process and spent a great deal of time on the preparations.

Like Lebedev, Rameev was a proponent of developing genuine Soviet computers. At the same time, he and his supporters were counting on a close partnership with European firms, which were looking for an alliance with the Soviet Union in hopes of eliminating the American monopoly in the computer market.

However, the scientifically sound proposals by Lebedev, Rameev, and Glushkov – the most authoritative Soviet computer scientists of the period – were ignored by the Soviet Union's elite political leaders, who resolved to copy the IBM-360. Because he disagreed with this decision, Rameev was removed from the game like a superfluous pawn, despite the fact that his career was blossoming. By the age of 44, he had trained a remarkable team of technicians and designers who in turn had created dozens of universal and specialized computers, plus more than a hundred peripheral devices.

The results of the Soviet government's decision were deplorable and moreover, tragic. Although still in their formal life cycle, by the 1980s most of the 13,000 manufactured ES models no longer operated; the ones still working produced diminished economic returns and didn't recoup their original investment. Such was the sad reality of living under a dictatorial administration and Rameev publicly condemned their resolution.

While writing this book I visited Mikhail M. Botvinnik,^[1] an old friend of Rameev's. I wanted to hear his opinion of Rameev as a person and friend.

I was pleasantly surprise by Botvinnik's youthful appearance because he was already in his eighties when we met. He told me of his first meeting with Bashir Rameev during a trip to Penza, noting that a deep friendship developed between them. "Gentle, kind, modest and extremely honest," that is how Botvinnik described Rameev. "At the same time, he was incredibly talented, possessing a unique combination of technical savvy and practicality. Even though the beginning of his life was difficult because of the arrest of his father in 1933, it did not detract from his dignity, love of people, and desire to serve our nation."

Computers evolve; the new generation quickly surpasses the old one. This allowed Rameev to design first, second and third generation computers. At one time, his designs comprised the majority of universal computer stock in the Soviet Union. Today, a few of them remain only in museums. Political administrators halted the development of the Ural computers, because the battle between the opposing parties was unfavorably stacked in favor of the bureaucrats. But it was a Pyrrhic victory that brought no glory to the Soviet government.

^[1] Translators Note: Mikhail Botvinnik, born in 1911, was a world chess champion from 1948–1963, and a Doctor of Technical Sciences.

Family Roots

Bashir Iskandarovich Rameev was born on May 1, 1918. When passports were established many years later, his father registered his son's birthday incorrectly, listing it as May 15. Rameev's life and work mirror the events of the post-October Revolution era, which began in 1917.

His well-educated grandfather, Zakir Rameev (1859–1921), was a poet of classic Tatar literature. He signed his poems with the pseudonym Dardmend, which means "sad" or "suffering" in Persian. He was a member and chairman of many charitable societies, published a newspaper and did much for the establishment of Tatar national culture. During his lifetime, only one of his published poetry books was translated into Russian: only two thousand copies were released and he remained largely unknown. Unfortunately, most of his poetry was lost after his death. In 1921, when many people were cold and starving, saving poetry was not important.

Only now, when justice and humanitarian principles are being reestablished in the Soviet Union, these events are finally coming to light. The truth is that Zakir Rameev was also a rich businessman, a gold mine owner, a member of the Russian State Duma, and a staunch liberal. He spent a considerable part of his profits on charity, support for orphans and foreign education of talented youth, with the aim of creating a Tatar intelligentsia. But after the October Revolution, such qualities were no longer admirable and instead were considered criminal: his son Iskandar and grandson Bashir would end up paying for them later.

Zakir Rameev sent his son, Iskandar, to study at the Freiberg Mining Academy in Germany. Iskandar returned to Russia the day before the First World War started, and worked in one of his father's gold mines. After the revolution, he became the chief engineer at a copper smelting plant in the town of Baimak. He was arrested for the first time in 1929 and released a year later without any charges. Bashir was only eleven years old and could not imagine the trouble yet to come, but he instinctively prepared for it, finding work as a photographer for a geological expedition and later as a bookbinder. He finished school in 1935 in Ufa, where his family had moved; his father had become the director of the Bashkiria gold trust. Iskandar Rameev was a talented engineer; he developed and implemented automatic milling units that could be operated by just one man, sharply increasing the level of gold extraction.

In April 1938 when Stalin's purges began, Iskandar Rameev was arrested again. His blueprints for the gold extraction unit disappeared into the bowels of the NKVD archives.^[2] After two years under investigation he was convicted and sentenced to five years in a prison camp in the Kemerovo region. In 1943, ten days before his scheduled release, he died.

Iskandar Rameev was posthumously exonerated over twenty years later. Unfortunately for his son, Bashir Rameev became the "son of an enemy of the people" in April 1938. By that time, he had successfully graduated from high school and was in his second year at the Moscow Energy Institute. He enjoyed tinkering with gadgets since childhood and once entered an amateur radio contest in Moscow. In 1935, at the age of 17, he became a member of the all-Union society of inventors.

After his father's arrest, he was forced to leave the Institute and return to Ufa. He remained unemployable for a long time because of his blacklisted status. When Rameev was drafted into the Army in 1939, one of the military physicians detected an inflammation in his lungs and rejected him. He decided to move to the Crimea where nobody knew him, planning to find work at a sanatorium or Young Pioneer camp and improve his health. Penniless, he ended up walking along the entire Crimean coast, but there was no work for him there either. He returned to Moscow, where he finally found a job as a technician at the Central Scientific Research Institute of Communication; it was early 1940, just before the Second World War.

Rameev was lucky: he was allowed to do what he enjoyed and his work had practical applications. During the first weeks of the war, he proposed a method for detecting dark objects from flying planes – by means of infrared radiation passing through cloaked windows. He also invented a relay device that would turn on the warning system during air-raids. He was not allowed to join the Army, but instead enlisted as a volunteer in a battalion of the Soviet Communication Ministry. The battalion served the Senior Command Headquarters of the Soviet Army. At first, Rameev fell in with a group that designed encryption equipment, probably because there was no time for proper assignments. The device that the group designed was accepted by the army and used for a period of time. Rameev took trips to Arzamas and Nizhniy-Novgorod, where Stalin intended to move the Headquarters, to install some of the technical equipment.

During the preparations for the liberation of Kiev, a special group of twenty men was formed. They were equipped with portable radio transmitters in order to provide communication service for the troops. As part of this operation, Rameev ended up at the Ukrainian front in September 1943. After their mission of providing communication for the troops during a forced crossing of the Dnepr and the liberation of Kiev ended, the group was disbanded and Rameev returned to Moscow.

In 1944 he was demobilized in accordance with a government decree that directed specialists to rebuild the economy, and applied for work at the Central Scientific Research Institute No. 108. In the application form, he stated that his father had died, but did not indicate where. Earlier, he sent a letter to Stalin asking for help; he was seeking the leader's official support in his claim that a son is not responsible for his father's actions. Instead of an answer, he received a paper summons for a telephone conversation, where a stern voice warned him: "Live quietly and don't contact us ever again!"

At that moment, Rameev understood that he had to do something unusual, outstanding, and very important for his people and nation in order to give his life meaning.

Academician Axel Berg, a remarkable scientist, was working at the Institute No. 108 at that time. Berg introduced Rameev to computing, applications in radar devices and the field of electronic circuitry. During the same period Rameev became interested in nuclear physics and invented a charged particle acceleration device, for which he received an invention certificate. When physicist and Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Alexander I. Leipunsky, learned of Rameev's invention, he was intrigued by the young talented scientist and invited him to Obninsk, where they were just beginning to experiment with atomic power engineering. But unfortunately, the political system failed the scientist again, and six months later Rameev was informed that there was no place for him at Obninsk.

^[2]Narodnii Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the predecessor to the KGB).

The Breakthrough

At the beginning of 1947, Rameev heard a BBC radio broadcast announcing that United States scientists had built an extraordinary electronic computer consisting of eighteen thousand electronic vacuum tubes, all of which were connected by tens of kilometers of cables. When Rameev heard about the ENIAC, he sensed that this was the branch of science and technology which was meant for him. He decided to discuss this with Berg, who was a very approachable person. Berg recommended that Rameev get in touch with Brook, who had been working with computing technology at the Power Engineering Institute. Brook already had a mechanical integrator-analyzer at his lab, a very bulky analog computer which was very difficult to operate. Back then, the air was literally filled with ideas of building digital computers and Brook was happy to receive an enthusiastic assistant. In May 1948 Rameev was admitted to Brook's laboratory as a design engineer worked directly in one of Brook's own offices.

Incredibly, the first result was achieved only three months later, in August 1948: the Avtomaticheskaya tsifrovaya vuichislitelnaya mashina, or "Automatic Electronic Digital Computer," ATsVM project- the precursor to the M-1. Corresponding Member of Academy of Sciences, I.S. Brook and engineer B.I. Rameev, filed its project report. The following is an abbreviated copy of the original document preserved in the Moscow State Polytechnic Museum.

The Automatic Digital Computer (Short description) Corresponding Member of the AS USSR I. S. Brook B. I. Rameev, Engineer Moscow, August, 1948 CONTENTS I. Introduction II. General Description of the Computer III. General Description of Individual Elements 1. Device for preparation of program tape and transferring input data from decimal to binary system 2. Main program controller 3. Identifier of the sign, equality and inequality of two numbers 4. Adder 5. Multiplier 6. Divider 7. Storage 8. Interpolator 9. Device for transferring output results from the binary to the decimal system and for printing on paper. IV. Description of several computer relay elements 1. Magnetic relay with two stable states 2. Magnetic trigger 3. Magnetic relay, which operates only when simultaneously receiving several control signals 4. Magnetic relay, which responds when one control signal enters any input channel 5. Decoder V. Appendix. Table of basic parameters of high-performance digital computing machines designed or under development in America. I. Introduction Recently, some information has surfaced in the foreign press about plans to design and build high-performance digital computing machines. The first machine that became operational in America during the war worked on the impulse-counting principle, where impulses were registered on electromechanical counters. This was a general-purpose computer for solving various mathematical tasks by means of counting finite differences.[3] The computer has a relatively low operating speed and restricted storage capacity (only 60 words). According to the available information, this machine has been widely used along with differential analyzers to solve problems related to the so-called Manhattan Project. After the first computer, a second and purely electronic one – the ENIAC – was developed and used primarily for solving the ballistics problems at the Aberdeen Army Proving Grounds. We will not dwell on the design of this machine or its features, which are only known from brief reviews in the current literature. Neither are we familiar with its principal disadvantages or those of its predecessor – the Harvard computer. Currently, several American organizations are busy developing new and improved computers. They are building a new machine at Harvard, two machines for the Bureau of Standards, and several more for universities, institutes, and special Army and Navy research centers. Similar computer projects have begun in England and France. The current literature also discusses a number of problems that might benefit from the use of such machines. These include the calculation of function tables, astronomy problems, processing statistical data, and preparation of bibliographical reference books. But the main purpose of such computers, which are also very costly to construct, would without a doubt be the solution of scientific and technical problems related to defense and the development of modern forms of military technology. For example, the American Bureau of Standards – an organization analogous to the Soviet Bureau of Weights and Measures – has a large department to investigate problems of artillery control. As reported in other publications, the same problem is being studied at several research firms, laboratories and special Army and Naval research institutions. One of these computers is to be used solely for weather forecasting calculations, which is an extremely important task during wartime. Finally, there is one other area that nobody mentions, but which can definitely benefit from the use of a computer or even a series of computers. It is the field of cryptography, which carries special significance for intelligence work. It is not possible to list every potential application of computers. Therefore, discussion here will be limited to the general trends in modern scientific research and construction that deal with new military technologies. The path from the initial idea to the first prototype is incredibly long. Therefore, it is very important to replace expensive and time consuming experiments with computations. Everybody knows how difficult and practically impossible such calculations are, even when the task can be expressed in exact mathematical terms. In addition, the accuracy of the results needs to be extremely high because the absolute error for the size of the values that we are working with (for example, the high speeds and great distances in artillery control), must have a very narrow margin. Such problems cannot be solved by [hand] calculation bureaus in a reasonable amount of time. All types of mechanical calculators are also inadequate due to their inherent inaccuracy. Implementation of high-performance digital computers to solve such large problems would save a lot of time, materials and labor, plus it would require a relatively small staff of highly qualified specialists, whose only job would be formulating the task and evaluating the results. These factors dictate the necessity of constructing and putting into operation – as soon as possible – one or more high-performance digital computers designed to address the needs of the most important scientific centers. Besides general-purpose computers, it is critical to develop specialized machines for solving ballistics, weather forecasting problems, and so on. Finally, some very significant problems require machines with many of the elements (counting, programming) used in digital computers. This would improve the problem solving methods and allow us to achieve positive results faster and more frequently than we do today. The automatic digital computer, which is briefly described below, is based on an original design. The diagrams of computer elements – adder, multiplier, divider, interpolator, transformers from decimal to binary system and vice versa, plus a series of relay schemes – are presented here for the first time as far as we know. An objective comparison with the computers that are being built abroad (according to our information), shows that our proposed machine has major advantages, as described below. We present here the general design of the machine and its elements; it will require a detailed project plan and a great deal of experimental work on separate units before we can begin building and assembling the computer. II. General Description of the ATsVM The ATsVM is a general purpose computer. 1. Calculations are done automatically. The operator's involvement stops once he has prepared the machine to solve a problem. 2. The calculations are carried out in electrical relay-code circuits. Mechanical moving parts are used in a few of machine elements: the program unit, output printing device and several others. 3. The calculations proceed very rapidly: the machine is capable of performing at up to 2000 operations per second. 4. The computer is "digital." Calculations are carried out as numerical operations. The initial data and results are presented as ten-digit numbers in decimal form. Internal calculations are carried out in binary form. As the ATsVM project's basis, the high-performance digital computing machine had to satisfy the following requirements: 1. The machine must have units for executing the basic numerical operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Depending on the general scheme of the computer, there could be separate units for each operation or one calculating unit for all operations, since the addition unit could perform the subtraction operation using a supplementary number; multiplication could be done by sequential addition and division could be carried out by sequential subtraction. But using a separate unit for each operation increases the calculation speed and reduces the amount of memory required 2. In order to guarantee high performance in automatic mode, the machine needs a storage device, or memory, for internal data and calculation results. This memory device should receive and send data at the same speed as the numerical operations are performed, which in the electronic computer might be on the order of tens of microseconds. The range of problems that the computer can handle depends on adequate memory capacity. For example: storing several hundred thousand numbers when solving algebraic equations with several hundred unknowns would require a substantial memory capacity. 3. The computer needs to have a table for number input. Reading the table may be done by the main computer or by a separate interpolator. The use of a separate interpolator could increase the computer's operating speed, simplify the programming process and reduce the required memory capacity. 4. A high-performance digital computer needs a control unit to manage calculations when solving specific sets of problems. The control speed needs to be the same as the speed of arithmetic operations.. 5. The controller will have to choose between two or more sequences of actions (according to predetermined criteria) and execute operations as a result of that decision. There also needs to be a unit that determines the sign of any given number and compares two numbers. 6. The computer should have devices for input of data and output of calculation results. The input and output devices should operate at the same speed as the control unit. 7. Finally, the digital computer must have some means to "transport" the numbers and program signals between the different parts of the machine. The automatic digital computer consists of the following basic elements: 1. A numerical keyboard device for data input, and a program tape puncher that automatically converts from decimal to the binary system. 2. A main program controller for all of the machine"s work. This controller selects the appropriate computer elements that are required for any given operation and controls the sequence and type of calculations. 3. A sign identifier that compares two numbers; it allows the main program controller to simultaneously select between two or more sequential operations and execute them, depending on the result received from the identifier. 4. Two adders. 5. A multiplier. 6. A divider. 7. Storage for "saving" numerical data, intermediate calculations, etc. 8. An interpolator for automatic calculation of intermediate function values, which are presented in an assigned table for small numbers of discrete values of the argument. The interpolator consists of a unit that automatically fills a table. 9. An output device for writing the results to tape (in binary form). 10. A device for converting output results from the binary to the decimal system and for printing them on paper. 11. Digital and command buses for connection between machine elements and transmission of program signals. The unit-diagram for the ATsVM computer is presented in Figure 1: Figure 1. A General View of the ATsVM The program for a sequence of numerical operations is written on programming tape in this logical format: "from where," "to where," "what to do." This corresponds to the computer's numerical or differential method of problem solving. In order for the computer to work according to this scheme, all of its elements have a common structure of input and output circuits. All digits and numerical signs are transmitted simultaneously from one element of the computer to another. The whole computer is served by a single digital bus (33 lines for digits and one line for signs) connected through "logic elements" (gates) to digital inputs and outputs of all computer elements. Gate units are controlled by the main program controller; their selection is produced by program signal decoders, connected to the program bus throughout the entire computer. Each decoder is assigned a number, the binary form of which is a key for the given decoder. This way, if the "from where" strip of tape has the decoder key for exiting the multiplier, and the "to where" strip has the decoder key for entering adder No. 1, then the number must be transmitted from the multiplier to adder No.1. The "what to do" strip of the program tape describes the operation to be done (for example, receiving, sending, erasing, multiplying, etc.) Besides decoder numbers and command signals, the program tape consists of a start pulse on each line (for each step), which initiates the computer elements that perform calculations at each step and other steps of the program where needed. The "numbers" strip contains written entry data previously converted to binary code. The input device that prepares the programming tape is the interface between the human operator and the machine and can only work at low speeds. Therefore, it is separated from the high-speed computer. The tape is prepared before running the program. To minimize the difference in speed between the computer and the input device, several input preparation devices may be used simultaneously for several problems. The programming tape is virtually wear free, so it may be used repeatedly when solving similar tasks, but the input data must be copied. For multiple repetition of the same calculation, the programming tape can be glued together and used as a continuous loop. There is another method for numerical data input into the computer where the numbers are written not on the programming tape but on special "numerical" tape. In this case, the numerical data could be read by a small capacity storage device that is constantly refilled with the "numerical" tape after receiving a signal from the main program controller. This method would also apply for inputting data into a table. The programming tape, prepared in accordance with the above mentioned logic scheme, is then placed into the main program controller which "reads" it and according to its data selects the elements of the computer that carry out the requested operation. Thus, the tape controls the sequence and type of each operation. It is necessary to mention that although the computer has fully centralized control, the main program controller selects separate elements of the computer and sends the command to start operations. The operation inside the element is executed automatically and independently under the control of a local autonomous controller. For example: the main program controller selects the multiplier and gives the signal for multiplication. From that moment, the local program controller of the multiplier executes the consecutive addition of partial products as many times as the number in the multiplier, shifting the partial product each time one digit to the left. The independent calculation cycle for separate elements is finished at the beginning of the next step-interval (with the exception of the interpolator). During the same step-interval only one element of the computer can work (with the exception of the interpolator). The computer works in controlled intervals, the duration of which is set by the speed the programming tape. This way, the speed of the computer is easily regulated from the slowest to the fastest, and is defined by the speed with which the arithmetic operations are executed (up to 2000 step-intervals per second). In cases when it is necessary to change the solution path due to the sign or magnitude of the module of intermediate calculation results, the programming tape must contain two or more ways to solve the task. The "what to do" section of the tape clarifies when a given solution path should not be taken, for example: if the number is "equal to," "less than," or "greater than." The compared number and intermediate calculation result are sent to the sign identifier. Depending on the result of the identifier's output, the correct solution path will be selected. A separate element of the computer is used for interpolation and every arithmetic operation except subtraction. This significantly simplifies programming, increases the operating speed of the computer, and reduces the amount of storage required. Two adders are used in the computer, one of which may be used as interim storage for a series of summations. Numerical data and intermediate results are stored in table form. In order to recall a number from storage, two keys are written on the programming tape. One key identifies the column and the other one the row of the storage table where the number is originally written. Therefore, writing the number and then reading it from storage requires two step-intervals. As already mentioned above, the required storage capacity depends on the problem being solved. It should be noted that even a relatively large storage capacity might be insufficient for certain solutions, for example: solving algebraic equations with several hundred unknowns. For such tasks, the storage capacity required would have to be several hundred thousand numbers. If the objective is to calculate at the computer's maximum speed, then such storage capacity would be difficult to realize because of the complexity and high cost of computer construction. Therefore, for solutions requiring a large memory capacity, the computer would have to operate at a lower speeds using large capacity tape storage. It would function as following: the intermediate calculation results are written on tape exactly the same way as the calculation results in the output unit - in the order in which they are received. Then, they are entered into the computer using the above-mentioned second method of numerical data input - into a small capacity storage device, which is constantly refilled with numbers from the tape. The numbers are stored in the same order as they will be used in subsequent calculations. An important advantage for the digital computer is the potential to input the numerical data in table form, which would require a table reader and, if necessary, an interpolator. In the computer, tables can be constructed in two ways: a) The function is presented in the form of a series: f(a + h) = C0 + C1h + C2h2 + C3h3 + ... b) The argument and the corresponding coefficient values are entered into the table C0, C1, C2, C 3 . . . Cn Reading and interpolating the table is executed by a separate interpolator that is in fact a simplified digital computer with fixed programming, which operates in much the same way as the main computer. For a given interpolation formula, the interpolator's program does not change and is written not on tape, but directly on a magnetic drum that is permanently rotating at high speed. The overall scheme of the computer is rather complex. However, it consists of several simple schemes: binary counters, gate elements that use an "on-off" principle, triggers, etc. Gate elements are the most common in the scheme. If the gates are constructed using electronic vacuum tubes, then their total quantity will increase significantly, with "gate" tubes amounting to 70% of all tubes. Taking this into account, we recommend substituting gate tubes with simpler components, such as magnetic and rectifier circuits. Although the time constant of magnetic circuits is greater than electronic ones, magnetic circuits could be used in a number of places. We will not speculate at this time which specific components (magnetic or rectifying) are best to be used as gate devices, and but we are certain that most of the gates can be built with the new schemes. We will also note that replacing electronic tubes in gate devices significantly simplifies the construction, increased reliability, durability and performance of the computer. The most promising long-range development for gate schemes is the implementation of crystal diodes, or rectifiers. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union is not producing these components yet. However, there is no doubt that we will begin making them very soon, because crystal diodes have many applications in modern radio and radar technology. Crystal diodes' miniature size and suitability for very high frequencies, combined with the absence of hot cathode ray tubes that have a limited life cycle and expend enormous heat energy, allows for the construction of extremely compact and inexpensive calculating units, which can be used for both stationary and mobile devices. The latter feature is very important for military applications. * * *

Remember, this document dates back to the mid-1948, and Lebedev had not yet started building the MESM. He would later write, "I began working on high-performance electronic counting machines at the end of 1948."

In the West, ten computers were already being developed in America, one in England, and one in France. Since the computers were developed primarily for military purposes, published materials about them were very brief. Most of these computers were based on electro-mechanical relays rather than on electronic vacuum tubes.

After carefully reading the above report, it becomes obvious that Brook and Rameev came very close to realizing the principle of stored memory programs – originally considered von Neumann's and Lebedev's idea. They achieved it by allowing the programs to be written into memory (on tape), placing the result on the same tape and then inputting it back into the machine for subsequent calculations. In other words, they provided the option to process instructions in the computer's arithmetic unit.

This is what Rameev remembered about these breakthroughs:

Working in Berg's Institute No. 108 was like attending a fine school. The knowledge I gained in electronics combined with almost twenty years of amateur radio experience and my tendency to invent things may explain why collaborating with Brook was so successful. Together, Brook and I discussed general ideas about the computer. Then I drafted circuit schemes and wrote explanations for his review. He occasionally made notes and corrections to the text (I still have some of the copies with his handwriting). I worked out of his office, in the main building of the Power Engineering Institute.

We also discussed how to implement this project and decided it was necessary to establish a special construction bureau. I worked for two weeks in the Lenin Library, studying the special literature on design of industrial enterprises and factories.^[4] As a result, this document was born.

I cannot remember where or what I ate back then, but I remember the room I lived in, where the housekeeper stored potatoes. It had a large wood-burning stove that I heated up with thick volumes of Legislation of Tsarist Russia that I found there. From 1944, I leased a room – or sometimes a corner of a room ­– for two to four months at a time, in many different Moscow districts, changing places ten times. Nobody wanted to register my residence officially and landlords were afraid to rent a room to an unregistered person for an extended period of time. I kept all of my belongings in three paper bags, and I moved with them from one place to another. In 1952, SKB-245 gave me my own room in a communal apartment.

During their year of working together, Brook and Rameev prepared and sent to the State Inventions Committee over 50 invention applications for the various computer units. However, many of the applications were returned without confirmation or with a list of questions. There were no computer technology experts on the Committee yet, and the individual who reviewed the applications was an electric motor specialist. Meanwhile, the Committee gradually accepted the applications. In December of 1948 they submitted the invention application for the "The Automatic Digital Computer" and received notarized Invention Certificate No. 10475 on December 4, 1948 – the first computer invention document in the Soviet Union.

In the beginning of 1949, Brook presented the theory of a digital computer at a closed meeting of the Scientific Council of the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy, where he had been a member since 1947. In the presentation, he demonstrated the model of the diode matrix arithmetic unit that Rameev had designed.

In 1949, the Army unexpectedly drafted Rameev as a radio-location specialist and immediately flew him to the Russian Far East. However, the rush was unwarranted, because Rameev had to wait for an assignment for one and half months, before being sent to teach at a submarine school. Brook lobbied non-stop to have Rameev come back to Moscow, and contacted Bruevich and Parshin for help. In the end, Rameev returned to Moscow where he found a letter offering him a new post as the laboratory chief at SKB-245.

In order to accomplish this, Parshin had to sign a special document assuming personal responsibility for the "son of an enemy of the people," due to the secrecy of the project at SKB-245.

Borrowing from some of his and Brook's earlier ideas, Rameev began collaborating with Yuri Bazilevsky, the manager of the digital computer department at SKB-245. That marked the beginning of the Strela project, which was met with enormous enthusiasm. The SKB-245 chief, Mikhail Lesechko, dedicated all of his organizational abilities to the success of this project. His staff, in fierce competition with the BESM project, worked around the clock to achieve what was seemingly impossible. It only took workers a couple of nights to assemble cumbersome equipment for cooling the enormous premises where Strela's assembled units were being installed.

An SKB-245 employee and Strela project participant, Evgenia Tikhonovna Semyenova, recalled the work atmosphere of that time:

In March 1950 I had asked the personnel department at Moscow Energy Institute for a job at the Scientific Research Institute, or SRI-10. During graduate placement, I agreed to go to work at the prestigious "mail box."^[5]

But instead I was sent to the SKB-245, which nobody had heard of. But I didn't complain, I just took the order and went. I got very lucky: first, I found myself in Rameev's lab, where I worked for five years. Everything I learned from him during those years has stayed with me throughout my life. Second, I got to work with the founder and manager of SKB-245, Mikhail Avksentievich Lesechko, who was certainly a very interesting person and a talented manager. I have never met another person like him since. Third, and most important, was the work. We were building one of the first digital electronic computers in our nation. During the first few months there we read American magazines that featured articles about computers; thank God that our managers had a large supply of them. Rameev would generate ideas and then we developed them ourselves. I would have never found such work at the SRI-10!

SKB-245 and the Schetmash were established at the SAM site around the end of 1949 or in early 1950. SKB-245 had several departments and since all work was top secret, department titles were replaced by numbers. But sometimes, we called them by their managers' names or even by themes.

The First Department, the Security Department – like the name suggests – protected our work and watched all of our comings and goings. They issued notebooks, which were sewn with thread, numbered, and sealed. Every morning they gave us our briefcases with those notebooks and collected them at the end of the workday.

The Second Department was responsible for analog computers and was managed by Roman Vasilievich Plotnikov. The guys from the Moscow Energy Institute worked in this section: Zhenya Glazov and Misha Yankin. We were close friends, so we always knew what was going on in their department. Vitenberg, Sulim, Gena Petrov and several others also worked there.

The Third Department, headed by Bazilevsky, was ours. We worked exclusively on developing the Strela computer. I will talk about our work later on.

The Fourth Department was managed by Ephraim Arumovich Gluzberg, although he was later replaced by Dmitri Alekseevich Zhuchkov. This department designed standard programs for the Strela and evaluated their operation.

The Fifth Department dealt with finances.

The Sixth Department was developing a differential analyzer and was managed by Alexander Bednyakov.

Later, other departments were added.

Our department had several laboratories. Rameev's lab designed Strela's arithmetic unit and the operational memory component. I designed the multiplier-divider unit, and Boris Zaitsev the addition-subtraction unit.

There was yet another lab managed by George Prokudaev, where Sasha Larionov, Larissa Dmitrieva and Maya Kotlyarevska worked. They were all from the Moscow Energy Institute, but joined us a year after the project began. Prokudaev's lab designed external memory devices using cathode ray tubes, but something was wrong with them. The tubes were extremely unreliable so Rameev and Lazarev started designing external memory on a magnetic drum. The first Strela models were made with external magnetic drum memory.

Trubnikov's lab developed Strela's other external units.

Even thought Rameev often did not get along with his superiors, he was gentle with his subordinates and spoke in a clam, low voice. I remember that Rameev and Bazilevsky had several disagreements during that period. It was pretty normal because there were many debates about the structure of the machine and its component base. For example, should they use vacuum tubes or relays? Rameev insisted that we make the computer with vacuum tubes. I still remember standing in front of the unit frame that contained twenty two hundred of these tubes, holding a P6 electronic tube in my hand. It was not a tiny tube, but a real P6, ten centimeter long. The multiplier's frame was about five meters wide and at least two and half meters high, or perhaps even more.

We worked very hard, often through the evenings and into the nights, especially when high-level officials were about to visit. They came from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and from various other Ministries. We had to prepare ahead of time for such visits and on the days they actually came to the see the facilities, we hid our soldering irons. Rameev would always make a joke, "Here we are, sitting around again with clean necks!"^[6]

We could work as late as we wanted, but if somebody was even three minutes late at the start of the day, he was reprimanded by the deputy director-administrator. If they were twenty minutes late, the case was referred to a disciplinary committee. At the entrance of the building was a clock where we were supposed to punch in with our time-cards. The overseer was a tough and ruthless woman who refused to give anyone a break if they were ever late.

Now I understand that we designed the computer in an unbelievably short time. Moreover, we designed and built every single component of the machine. We started around March of 1950 and by the end of 1951 the documentation was sent to SAM factory in Moscow. Before the end of 1952, the first models were ready for adjustment.

In 1953 the working model of the Strela was presented to the Stalin Prize Commission. At the same time, Lebedev revealed the BESM computer. The Prize went to SKB-245, because Strela appeared better prepared for industrial production and was cheaper. Our colleagues joked that the reason Strela was cheaper was because we hadn't been paid overtime.

For that time Strela's performance was ordinary, with a 2000 operation per second speed, 2048 words of storage, and 43-digit word length. It was a three-address computer.

By the time the Stalin Prize was awarded, I had already left SKB-245 to teach at the Moscow Energy Institute. But, during my lectures on impulse technology, I always relied on circuit calculation methods developed in the Strela project and I remembered Bashir Iskandarovich.

There was one thing about SKB-245 that bothered me during the entire five years that I worked there: the tight security. A soldier stood at the entrance and there was no going in or out of the building during working hours without a special permission form signed by a manager. Even in case of an emergency at home, the soldier would not let you go. We used to work evenings and weekends, but it still didn't matter!

And then, the First Department! God forbid if I forgot to return my secret case with all of the notebooks, drafts, or even tiny scraps of paper; a severe reprimand and an immediate inquiry in front of the entire laboratory team. What rubbish! More than once I worked until late in evening while my son and mother waited at home, awake. I would be riding on the Metro and suddenly it would hit me: "The oscilloscope! Did I turn it off? The briefcase? Oh Lord, I don't remember! Oh, yes, I returned it before dinner..."

Rameev acted as the deputy chief designer for the Strela. The SAM in Moscow eventually produced seven models – technically the first industrially produced Soviet electronic digital machines. They were installed at the Academy of Science's computer center, the Institute of Applied Mathematics, and in closed government ministry computer centers that were supporting the space, nuclear weapons, and energy complexes.

Rameev recalled an episode in 1954 when the first Strela had been delivered and installed at the Institute of Applied Mathematics. Keldysh and Lesechko used to frequent the laboratory and during this particular visit Strela performed some very impressive calculations for several nuclear physics problems, which prompted Keldysh to proclaim, "If we could make five to seven such computers, the Soviet Union would be in great shape!"

^[3]Brook and Rameev are referring to the Harvard Mark-1.

^[4]: Known today as the Russian State Library, The former Lenin Library [in Russian: Biblioteka imeni Lenina] in Moscow contains some 40 million books and periodicals.

^[5] Translator's Note:The phrase "mail box" designated secret Soviet defense enterprises such as weapons research institutes, production plants, and military divisions.

^[6] Translator's Note: This refers to a well-known Soviet joke about getting ready for guests: A mother tells her son, "Your grandparents are coming soon. Please go and wash your dirty neck now." The son replies, "But what if they don't come? Then I would sit around like a fool with a clean neck!"

The Chief Designer of the Ural Computers

After completing the Strela, Rameev redoubled his efforts towards the Ural-1, and eventually it became the work horse for many Soviet computer centers. Rameev's long term goal was to create a family of universal computers with performance capacity ranging from modest to super-powerful.

The Soviet government ordered the Penza factory to manufacture the Ural-1 and in 1955 Rameev -- together with a group of talented young specialists who had worked with him at SKB-245 in Moscow

Rameev wrote to me:

We organized the Penza design team between 1952 and 1954, when SKB-245 was still in Moscow. In 1953 and 1954 the Ural-1 project commenced. Since the machine was designated for industrial mass-production, I spend most of my time on standardizing the racks, units, and overall design. At that stage, I was personally involved in designing circuitry, followed by manufacturing and adjustment, together with Vasily Ivanovich Mukhin, Andrei Nikolayevich Nevsky, and others. As they gained experience in Penza and their engineering talents grew, I gave them progressively more independent design assignments, beginning with specialized computers. Using standardized vacuum tube elements, they built special computers such as the "Pogoda" system for meteorology, the "Granit" system for calculating probabilities in experimental observations, and the "Crystal" system for x-ray crystallography. They also developed several special military computers.

Using vacuum tubes, Nevsky, Mukhin, Gennady Sergeevich Smirnov, Alexander Stepanovich Gorshkov, Lev Nikolayevich Bogoslovskii, Oleg Fedorovich Lobov, and several others, designed the universal computers Ural-2 in 1959 and Ural-4 in 1961. During my first ten years in Penza, they produced eleven different computer types and nearly one hundred peripheral units, all of which were delivered to customers and installed at production points.

In 1960, I started working on creating a family of Ural computers that were based on semiconductors. In November 1962, the design work for the Ural-10 complex was completed and the project was slated for automated production. Even though some of its elements had been developed for the Ural-11 and Ural-16 series, they were widely used in many other computing devices and in automation. To satisfy the demand in those areas, several million of such elements were manufactured.

I would like to note here the outstanding contribution made by Vladimir Ivanovich Burkov in the development of the structure, instruction and operating systems, and software of the Ural-11-- Ural-16 computer family.

During my time in Moscow and in Penza, I worked for organizations that I could confidently call a synergy between technology and industry. Only one director ran the Scientific Research Institute, a special designers' bureau, and the production plant. That is why there were no problems when we presented the newly designed computers for mass production. In that respect, I was probably in a better position than any other chief designer.

I considered standardization to be one of the most important principles. When I designed the Urals using electronic vacuum tubes, standardization allowed us to create a new series of computers in a short period of time. This issue gained much attention during the development of the Ural-11 --- Ural-16 series. Maximum "modularity" of the elements, junctions, units, computers and standard interfaces enabled us to minimize the assortment of assembled circuits, so that the mass-production of component systems and computers became significantly easier and cheaper.

In brief, the main features of the new generation of computers implemented by Rameev in the new Ural series consisted of the following:

The computers should represent a family of machines of varying performance, compatible with each other in construction, circuitry and software. The computers should have a flexible structure and a wide assortment of peripheral devices with standard interfaces to select the most compatible applications for any given task. This would also facilitate customizing the computer during its life cycle in accordance with the end user's needs and integrating newly developed units.

The design and circuitry need to allow several computers (same or different) to be joined together to form information processing systems and guarantee easy modifications of the system's components to increase performance, plus expand the number of solvable tasks and fields of application.

The backup units would guarantee a highly reliable system for real-time information processing. We need to plan for: a system of circuitry to protect information, access to programs regardless of where they are located in the memory, a system of relative addresses, a sophisticated method of starts and stops with a corresponding set of instructions which would allow us to coordinate complex systems of simultaneously working devices and time-sharing of many tasks.

The ability to work with floating and fixed points, in decimal and binary systems, and to select and execute operations with words of both fixed and variable lengths would allow us to effectively solve a wide variety of economical, informational and scientific-technical tasks;

A system of hardware control for storage, addressing, transmission, and processing of information.

A large operating memory capacity with direct selection of words with variable length, effective hardware means for the control and protection of programs from each other, partition addressing, a developed system of starts and stops, the ability to access a large external memory on magnetic disks and drums, usage of timers, equipment for interfacing with communication channels, and operator keyboards for communication with the computers. This will allow us to build information processing systems for multiple users which should work in a time-sharing mode.

All elements, blocks, and units are standardized for optimization of mass-production and technological processes, which would guarantee a reliable, high quality product.

These main features of the new generation of computers were presented in a draft document outlining the Ural-11, Ural-14, and Ural-16 family of computers. It appeared a year and a half before a similar publication about the American IBM-360. Thus, Rameev proposed the idea for a computer family with compatible hardware and software independently from the Americans, and it was implemented practically at the same time. It is important to note that unlike the first models of the IBM-360, the Ural family was capable of supporting information processing systems, which were made up of similar and/or different computers with networking capabilities and other upgrades.

Academician Dorodnitsyn signed a State Commission Act that approved the Ural software:

For the first time in the USSR, a systems approach to software development has been implemented for a series of computers. We designed an original operating system, incorporating all of the main functions that such modern systems are capable of realizing at this time. Our software documentation is of the highest quality; it is comprehensive and has a uniform layout.

Penza also developed a number of systems for the Soviet economy and national defense. In 1962 Rameev was awarded the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences without having to defend a thesis -- an extraordinary case in the Soviet Union.

The Unrealized Hopes

Extensive experience with the Ural projects and leaps in foreign technology allowed Rameev to envision a whole new generation of world-class computing machines. Lebedev, Dorodnitsyn, Glushkov, and others were also thinking along the same lines because of the favorable conditions in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government allocated significant resources to develop computing machinery. By the 1960s, there were dozens of computer plants and several large scientific-technical institutes in Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, Penza and Yerevan, which already had experience with second generation computers. Also, by the late 1960s Moscow boasted one of the most powerful scientific organizations in the Soviet Union –NISEVT. By now, the official political attacks on cybernetics were a thing of the past, and computerizing the economy, science, and industry were considered high priorities. Thus the Soviet government decided to develop the Unified Computer System series (ES-EVM as noted in Chapter One) using integrated circuits.

In the West, computers were initially developed in the United States, followed by Great Britain and West Germany. In America, IBM developed the first model 360 System in 1963–1964. This series had models with varying performance capabilities that were supported by a large selection of software. For small models, the DOS/360 operating system was proposed and for large models, the OS/360 operating system; the latter was designed because the DOS/360 was not powerful enough for large computers. The experience of developing these complex and extensive operating systems showed that they required even more labor -- thousands of man-years -- than creating the hardware itself.

Later, the British company ICL developed the third generation System-4 family of computers, which were simpler from a software point of view. Almost simultaneously the Siemens Company produced an analogous computer family.

The first country in Eastern Europe to develop a series of analogous computers was the German Democratic Republic, where the political establishment decided to copy one of the American IBM-360 models.

Behind the Iron Curtain, discussions about the structure and architecture of third generation computers began in the late 1960s. On January 26, 1967 Glushkov chaired a joint meeting of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Commission on Computer Technology, headed by Dorodnitsyn, and the Council of Ministers State Committee of Science and Technology, headed by Glushkov. There was only one item on the agenda: which ES computer system to select for development in the Soviet bloc nations? The decision was made to use the IBM-360 logic structure and command system as a prototype. Glushkov was the only opponent, and his dissenting opinion was that drawing on foreign experience would certainly be beneficial, but not to the extent of simply copying an entire system, which was already several years old.

At this time, Nikita Khrushchev put forth a government order to transfer several Soviet Academy of Sciences Institutes to various industrial ministries. The Institute of Precision Mechanics was transferred to the Radio Industry and belonged to the Academy of Sciences in name only, thus weakening the authority of its specialists in electronics technology, or to put it more bluntly -- completely undermining them.^[7]

Glushkov and Rameev offered to pioneer a new computing project based on Soviet computer experience, while keeping an eye on foreign achievements. In October 1967, they wrote to the Radio Industry Ministry, which was in charge of the ES project:

The resolution to build a unified series of computers for applications in national economy and government is appropriate and timely. It requires a strong team of software engineers. Based on a foundation of streamlined technological design, we can sharply increase our production of computers, and integrate compatible computers into a variety of applications.

Success, which we hope to achieve as the result of developing a unified computer system, depends entirely on how we plan to resolve this question. It is impossible not to have serious objections to the decision to copy the IBM-360 model, proposed by the Commission on Computer Technology on October 26, 1967.

It is imperative to bear in mind that the IBM-360 system, built in 1963-1964, is already lagging behind the standards and current demands placed on mathematical machines.

...The proposal to copy the IBM-360 system is equivalent to manufacturing 1970s computers using the technical standards of the early 1960s. Considering the existing trends in science and technology, the architecture of the IBM-360 will be obsolete in the 1970s, and it will not be capable of meeting the current demands.

Copying foreign work excludes the possibility of utilizing our own collective experience of computer research, and in the immediate future, will hinder our ability to employ new principles. This will bring the development of computer technology in our nation to an end.

The design teams of Soviet mathematical machines have sufficient experience to build a family of computers that would satisfy future requirements.

...It would be a better decision to develop the architecture of a unified series of Soviet computers based on our own domestic experience and achievements, while still keeping an eye on foreign innovation.

The Ural designers had solid grounds for this conclusion. They had already produced a family of Ural-11, Ural-14 and Ural-16 – programmable semiconductor computers. A comparison of the architectural decisions and functional possibilities of the Urals with those of the IBM-360 and System-4 showed that the Soviet machines were competitive with their foreign counterparts. At this time, the Penza factory was just completing the development of the multiprocessor computer Ural-25, while Ural-21 -- a design based on integral microchips -- had been successfully fine-tuned and put into production.

The transformation to an integral microchip element base and further development of the structure and architecture of the Ural family would certainly have resulted in an advanced unified computer system. Although the Urals had a limited software library, this disadvantage would have disappeared once in mass-production and as the number of users gradually increased.

The proposal to develop ES computers received the full support of the Eastern European socialist countries. Moreover, all of them except East Germany opposed copying the IBM-360. After the negotiations in August 1968, the multilateral document "General Technical Principles of the Creation of ES Computers" was signed and approved by Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia – with the exception of East Germany – in which the following opinion was expressed:

The structure of the ES computer should be analogous to the structure of modern systems like IBM-360, Siemens-4004, and System-4. During the development process, it should be possible to change the structure in order to take advantage of the latest computer innovations with an accepted degree of compatibility of software and technical features, while employing domestically patented computer technology, and yet maintain the same development schedule for the entire project.

During further multilateral talks, all of the Eastern European socialist nations unanimously adopted an index of non-privileged instructions for the ES computer that matched the instruction lists of the IBM-360, Siemens-4004 and System-4. The issue of privileged instructions was discussed several times, but no decision was made. The East German specialists, who insisted on duplicating the IBM-360, suggested using its list of official instructions, while other delegations disagreed. A special multilateral meeting in November 1968 aimed at the selection of a logic structure for the ES computer did not reach a unanimous decision; therefore the problem was passed on to an Eastern bloc council of chief computer designers.

The development of Soviet computer technology did not exclude extensive international cooperation. On the contrary, its advocates – Lebedev, Rameev, and Sulim – understood the advantage of cooperating with Western European companies and consciously made efforts in that direction. Western European manufacturers of computer technology were eager to compete with IBM, given the Soviet Union's huge scientific and industrial potential. ICL took the first steps towards establishing collaboration with the Soviet Union in computer design and manufacturing, offering to share some of its System-4 technology.

Rameev was an active supporter and participant in these negotiations and he signed a series of bilateral agreements to cooperate with ICL. He figured that System-4 components could be produced by one or two Soviet computing factories, while the SRI and other construction companies could create an improved series of computers based on both domestic accumulated experience and the most recent foreign achievements.

Thus, there was every reason to conclude that the 1970s would bring new great success. But how did these events actually unfold? Why were the leading specialists, Lebedev, Rameev, Glushkov, Dorodnitsyn, and Sulim ignored, while their opponents ended up victorious in the selection of a prototype for an ES?

This problem was not discussed in the Soviet media, and it remains controversial even now. Archival materials and participants' recollections of the discussions of this issue make it possible to reconstruct the chain of events here.

The wishes of Soviet designers to employ foreign technology, mainly software libraries, were certainly clear: it was quite natural to be curious about the IBM-360 and System-4.

Yet to properly integrate the software, it was necessary to:

• Obtain the full software documentation for the prototype system, which would be needed for manufacturing, support and operation.
• Establish contact with the firm that supported the software.
• Obtain sufficient information that would guarantee software/hardware compatibility of the prototype and any newly created system.
• Provide software-equipped prototype computers for software programmers.

The Soviet Union's choice of the IBM-360 as a prototype did not match any of the above conditions, because IBM had no intention of cooperating with the Soviet Union during that period: America had placed an embargo on the sale of computers to our nation. Any documentation that was available in the Soviet Union for the IBM-360 software was incomplete because it did not come directly from IBM, but was obtained through industrial espionage. The purchase of genuine IBM-360 computers was possible only through "intermediaries," which caused enormous problems.

Soviet relations with ICL were much better, due to the efforts of Sulim, Y. D. Gvishiani – Deputy Chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology in the Soviet Cabinet of Ministers, and other supporters of cooperation with European companies.

In accordance with a memorandum of April 26, 1968, initiated and signed by the head of ICL and Chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology, negotiations continued in order to promote cooperation in the area of computer software.

ICL agreed to share detailed information about System-4's software with Soviet scientists and was willing to send their specialists for further assistance during development, production, and software support of Soviet-made third generation computers.

During the negotiations, which included Sulim, Rameev, and several others, ICL's representatives agreed to begin cooperative development of the next generation of computer technology. In order to compete with IBM, they prepared to commit significant funds for this joint venture and provide full documentation of System-4's hardware and software by September 1, 1969.

Excited by these promising possibilities, Rameev agreed to move to NISEVT in 1967 as the deputy chief engineer of the upcoming project; to him, the choice of the prototype seemed clear. However, the biased attitude towards both the "manufactured" success of the provincial Penza school and Moscow's monopolizing organizations -- in the first place NISEVT -- became apparent much later.

In April 1969, the Council of Chief Designers headed by NISEVT's director Sergei Arkadyevich Krutovskikh, decided that the ES required a logic structure and instruction system that precisely matched the IBM-360, despite the objections from Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

Krutovskikh based his decision on the fact that collaborative work had already begun between NISEVT and its main partner – East Germany, which was studying IBM-360's software and was vehemently opposed to taking any other approach. Chief of the Radio Ministry Industry, Valery Kalmykov, and President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Keldysh, backed them: the top leaders had fallen under the hypnotic influence of the proposal to avoid domestic software development.

This plan's proponents argued that IBM had the world's richest and most popular software library, which could not be rejected by even fourth generation computers; and if the Soviet Union copied the 360 series of machines, then we would be saving time and money. In December 1969 a meeting was held at the Radio Industry Ministry, at which Rameev took detailed notes as acting recording secretary.

The meeting was attended by Kalmykov, Keldysh, Gorshkov (a representative of the Military-Industrial Commission) [in Russian: Voenno-promishlennaya kommissia, or VPK], Savin, Kochetov (a representative of the Communist Party Central Committee), Rakovsky, (a deputy representative of Gosplan), Sulim, Lebedev, Krutovskikh, Gorshkov, (Deputy Chief of the Radio Industry Ministry Levin, Shura-Bura, Ushakov, Arefeva, Przhialkovsky, Matkin, and Dorodnitsyn. ^[8]

According to Rameev's notes, the discussion went as follows:

Sulim: Regarding the state of negotiations with the GDR and ICL.

The option of IBM-360: The GDR is familiar with the IBM-360, and they are successfully developing one of the models (R-40). We have reserves and a team able to start the project. Mastering the operating system of the IBM-360 will require 2200 man-years and 700 workers. We have no contacts with the IBM; problems could develop with the acquisition of an analogous machine, which will cost 4-5 million dollars. The GDR has only a portion of the required documentation.

The ICL: We will receive all of the necessary technical documentation and support to master it. We will need to perform some alterations for which ICL is offering to purchase a batch of its recently manufactured machines. We will be able to use our team of software engineers to design additional application programs.

A group of our programmers has already received on-the-job training at this company. There is a strong likelihood of developing fourth-generation EVMs in the near future. This company is being very helpful in all aspects, because it hopes to compete with IBM after strengthening their alliance with other European companies and us. In addition, Italian and French companies have agreed to participate in the creation of fourth-generation computer technology.

Przhialkovsky: With the IBM-360, we have a system of 6 thousand microinstructions and 90% of the diagrams for the technical-electronic memories; 70% of them have flowcharts; 7000 units have design documentation. To collaborate with the ICL we will have to abandon all of these preparations and start over, which will result in one to one and half years delay. It will also require a lot of money (to purchase the ICL computers). On the other hand, collaboration with the GDR, who is successfully working on the IBM-360, is preferable. If we strengthen our teams of mathematicians, the DOS can be operational by 1971. It's time to stop vacillating.

Krutovskikh: Our project is modeled after the IBM-360 systems. If we collaborate with ICL, the composition of the models will need to be different. The technical characteristics will change and require four to five months for a preliminary design. At ICL, there is no clear distinction among their high-end models. They are included in the series of small and medium-sized computers as supercomputers. This is best not done. To change the direction at this time will push back the deadline for preparing technical documentation by one and half to two years, or perhaps more. Having worked with the GDR on the IBM-360, we can receive DOS and OS and begin serial production, without having to develop them ourselves. The Germans have gone too far to able to start over in a new direction with the ICL. The British are only interested in competition and they will likely jerk us around. They will not collaborate with us on larger machines; plus, we cannot buy 150 of their machines right now.

Dorodnitsyn: The issue of mastering the IBM-360 is oversimplified here. In actuality, it is considerably more complex. Mastery of the OS will require no less than four years, and we don't know how useful that will be. We need to collaborate together with ICL to create our own DOS and OS and produce our own computers.

Lebedev: The IBM-360 system series was developed ten years ago. We will have to limit our line of machines to small and medium capacity because the architecture of the IBM-360 is not adaptable to larger models (supercomputers). The British want to compete with the Americans after the transition to fourth generation computers. Machines with higher productivity require more specialized structure. The British are laying the foundation for automated design. The software system for the "System-4" is dynamic, and we will be able to develop it with the Brits. In turn, this will facilitate hands-on training of our personal, which would me more effective if done while developing our own proprietary system (together with the British).

Shura-Bura: From the point of view of the system software, the American version is preferable. The OS will require modifications and we will need to be familiar with all programs to achieve that.

Keldysh: We need to purchase licenses and design our own machines; otherwise we will simply repeat what others have already done. In general, we would have to create larger machines ourselves.

Lebedev: Our mathematicians believe that our programmers would receive better training using British methods.

Rakovsky: We need to consider long-term effects and come up with a unified concept. Everyone has agreed that the IBM has the most up to date software, but its operating system is very cumbersome. It would be virtually impossible to master it in four to five years. Although difficult, a decision needs to be made right now. If we choose to collaborate with the ICL, there will be political fallout with East Germany; plus, over the next five years they will produce two hundred models of the R-40. And still, we should accept ICL's offer.

Krutovskikh: Every developer except Rameev is against working with ICL. Besides, the R-50 will be ready in 1971.

Kalmykov: On the plus side, if we have DOS, we will be able to use the machines as soon as we produce them. We can also obtain many programs from the Germans. But on the minus side, we do not have any of the IBM-360 machines, and we will not have any contact with the IBM. We will loose time if we decide to collaborate with the ICL, but we will have direct contact with them and there is the promise of collaborating on the development of fourth generation computers, which is a greater advantage. They plan to design it without the Americans to compete with IBM.

Keldysh: We should not collaborate with the ICL now, but must team up with them on the design of the fourth generation of computers.

Kalmykov: Collaboration with the ICL is not going to happen. Instead, we need to ask the Germans for more help.

Those active supporters of copying the IBM-360 were General Designer of the ES-EVM Krutovskikh, his first deputy Levin, Shura-Bura, and Przhialkovsky. If at Kalmykov's conference on 18 December, 1969 -- where the final design decision was made -- the project leader would have taken a stand against copying, the computer technology development in the Soviet Union would have taken a different path.

A few months later, the Radio Ministry approved the final proposal in favor of copying the IBM-360 system.

Sulim immediately resigned from his post as Deputy Minister; a desperate gesture of protest from a man who had done everything possible to establish contacts with ICL and understood the negative consequences of copying the IBM-360 only too well.

Rameev asked to be removed from his position as Deputy General Designer of the ES computer.

As mentioned earlier, Lebedev failed to reverse the decision; the refusal of his subsequent attempts only worsened his condition and accelerated his death.

The scientific basis for the solution to this important problem – what kind of machine the ES computer was supposed to be – was substituted by the administrative order to copy the IBM-360 system: the Radio Industry Ministry, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and NISEVT's managers did not bother to take into account the opinions of leading computer scientists from the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations.

This decision resulted in negative and tragic consequences for Soviet computer science. In his 1991 study, Rameev analyzed the enormous labor and material costs. Following are some of Rameev's conclusions:

Up through January 1, 1989 the entire Soviet Union had 13,613 general-purpose computers. This stock consisted of:

• 24.9% computers of 1965 vintage (ES-1022);
• 12% various computers issued between 1965 and 1970;
• 13.6% computers issued in 1971 (ES-1033, ES-1055);
• 36% computers of the 1973 and 1978 era (ES-1035, ES-1036, ES-1045, ES-1046, ES-1060, EC-1061);
• 13.5% other computers issued between 1971 and 1980 (23 various models of ES computers, automated work stations based on ES computers, and imported foreign computers).

Model	First production year	Quantity in stock as of January 1, 1989	Portion in overall stock in percentage	Analogous prototype	First production year of analogous prototype
ES-1066, 1086	1984	43	0.3	IBM-3033	1980
ES-1061	1980	400	2.9	IBM-370/158	1973
ES-1060	1977	237	1.7	IBM-370/158	1973
ES-1055	1978	456	3.3	IBM-370/155	1971
ES-1046	1984	375	2.8	IBM-3031	1978
ES-1045	1979	1069	7.9	IBM-3031	1978
ES-1036	1983	933	6.9	IBM-370/148	1977
ES-1035	1977	1872	13.8	IBM-370/138	1976
ES-1033	1975	1405	10.3	IBM-370/145	1971
ES-1022	1974	3396	24.9	IBM-360/50	1965
Various computers built from 1965- 1970		1635	12.0
Other imported computers	1971-1978	1774	13.2 (less than 1% of each model)
	Total	13,613	100

The choice of foreign analogs was derived by nominal productivity without taking into account additional parameters, which would have defined technical standards.

At first glance, the technical level of the computer inventory, expressed in years, appears to mean nothing. However, these figures hide huge differences in technical/economical indicators and effectiveness.

The use of obsolete computers and information systems wasted massive quantities of personnel, financial and materials resources, and overshadowed the technical and economic benefits they managed to achieve. The losses caused by work-stoppages ("down-time"), and trouble-shooting (low reliability) of computers and systems in 1989 cost the Soviet Union about 500 million rubles.^[9]

Such were the consequences of the Soviet government's willful decision to copy the IBM-360. The "sovietization" of the IBM-360 system was the first step in surrendering the forefront position won by Soviet computer scientists in the 1950s and 1960s. The second step, which led to an even further retreat, was the mindless copying of subsequent American microprocessors, an initiative led by the newly founded Ministry of Electronic Industry. The culmination of this process was the replacement of computer research and development in the Soviet Union with importing large quantities of computers from abroad.

After receiving Rameev's letter of resignation from the position of Senior Designer of the ES computer, Kalmykov did not even bother to analyze the reasons why the country's leading computer designer and founder of the Penza scientific school made such a choice. Just like countless times before, the Communist administration failed to take advantage of this famous scientist's great creative potential, causing irreparable damage to the scientific-technical progress and to the society as a whole.

During the last years of his life, Rameev lived in Moscow. On the bookshelves in his apartment, he kept his reports, projects, and photos. Gradually, these items were donated to the Russian State Polytechnical Museum in Moscow. Rameev passed away on May 16, 1994.

^[7]: The implications of this decision were enormous. Under the aegis of the Academy of Science, scientists had more creative freedom. At an industrial ministry, one worked only under orders, and creative initiatives were not usually supported.

^[8] The description of this meeting and its interpretation are the opinions of the author and not of the editor, editorial consultant, or the translator. Without a doubt, the scientific proponents of the IBM-360 had their own good reasons for their arguments.

^[9] Translator's Note: The official currency exchange rate in 1989 was about 0.6 rubles to $1.00.

The Creator of the Ternary Computer

On June 21, 1941, Nikolai "Kolya" Petrovich Brusentsov was an eighth-grade schoolboy living in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. The next day, along with millions of other Soviet citizens, he heard Vyacheslav Molotov's radio proclamation that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union: Molotov's famous words, "Victory will be ours!" accompanied by Borodin's Bogatyrskaya Symphony,^[10] marked the last day of Brusentsov's childhood.

He was born on February 7, 1925 in the village of Kamenskoe, Ukraine. His father died in 1939 at the age of 37. Kolya's mother was left to care for him and his two younger brothers. When the war began they dug holes in the ground near the house and hid there during the bombings. Eventually they were evacuated to the Orenburg region of Russia. The Urals greeted them with -40°C temperatures. At first, the evacuees lived in tents and later on made crude barracks out of straw and mud; most of them were part of the construction crew that built the Orsko-Khalilovsky metal manufacturing plant. Kolya worked as an apprentice for a cabinet-maker. In spring 1942 the Ural River flooded, submerging the straw and mud barracks where the Brusentsov family lived, destroying all of their remaining property.

Nevertheless, Kolya did not leave school. He attended night school in Novotroitsk during the winter of 1941–1942, and in the summer moved to Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg). He had already been accepted at the Kiev Music Conservatory – which had also been evacuated to Sverdlovsk – in the Folk Music Instruments Department.

In February 1943, at the age of 18, Brusentsov was drafted into the Army and sent to radio classes in Sverdlovsk. Six months later he was dispatched to serve with a rifle division near Tula. Two weeks later they were mobilized to Nevel where our troops were partially surrounded by the Germans. He memorized the words from a German propaganda leaflet: "You are in a ring; we are in the ring; lets see what the end will bring." Up until December 1943, the division was on the defensive; then after regrouping with other troops, took the offensive and advanced to Vitebsk. In one of the battles, a mine fell at Brusentsov's feet but fortunately did not explode. "According to my mother I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth" – he recalled. The difficult conditions at the front slowly improved after several successful offensives in Belarus, the Baltic Republics, and East Prussia. Brusentsov was awarded a medal for bravery and the Red Star Order in 1945. Out of the twenty-five 18-year-old soldiers, who were initially drafted to form his division in August 1943, only five remained.

In 1946 Brusentsov's entire family moved to Tver, Russia, where his stepfather had been transferred to work. Brusentsov began studying simultaneously at a conservatory and at a school for young workers. He graduated from the 10th grade in 1948 with excellent marks, and on the advice of a friend from Moscow, applied to the Radio Department at the Moscow Energy Institute.

During his first year at the Energy Institute he battled tuberculosis, but managed to overcome it and stayed in school. His room in the dormitory was next to Mikhail Kartsev's room and the two often studied together. Neglectful of his own health, Kartsev also came down with tuberculosis, which was a very common disease among the MEI students at that time.

Radio technology captivated Brusentsov. While preparing his diploma project during his last year at the Institute, Brusentsov came up against the problem of calculating complex tables. After investigating a number of calculation methods, he put together diffraction tables on an elliptical cylinder, now known as Brusentsov's tables.

After graduating from the Institute in 1953, Brusentsov was sent to Moscow University's SKB, where they promised to help him find an apartment. At that time, the Bureau was just established and projects were assigned randomly. At first, they asked Brusentsov to build a new type of vacuum tube amplifier. Even though he handled the job well and completed the task, he received little satisfaction from it, and moreover, could not see himself doing such work in the future. He casually complained about this to his friend Kartsev, who by now was working in Brook's laboratory. Kartsev invited him to see the M-2 computer, which was already operational. It was the first time Brusentsov had seen such a modern and promising device, and he immediately fell in love with it. As luck would have it, the computer also caught Sobolev's eye; he arranged to have it moved to the University, and Brusentsov was sent to Brook's laboratory to familiarize himself with the machine prior to its transfer. Unfortunately, at the Soviet Academy of Sciences elections, Sobolev voted for Lebedev to be nominated as an Academician instead of Brook. Isaak Brook was offended and canceled the transfer of the M-2 to the University.

Brusentsov recalled what Sobolev said upon hearing the news, "Maybe it's for the best. We need to create our own laboratory at the Moscow University computer center to develop computers for use in our schools." So he decided to transfer Brusentsov to the Mechanics-Mathematics Department at the University.

Brusentsov recalled his first meeting with Sobolev:

When I first came to Sergei Sobolev's office, it seemed as if I was enveloped in sunlight – his face looked that kind and open. We hit it off immediately and I will be forever grateful to providence for leading me to this remarkable man, a bright mathematician and knowledgeable scientist, one of the first people who understood the significance of computers.

Sobolev wanted to develop a small computer suitable for use in university laboratories. He organized a seminar in which he, Shura-Bura, Konstantin Adolfovich Semendaev, and Zhogolev participated. They analyzed the disadvantages of existing computers, looked at instruction systems and architecture, and considered various plans for technical implementation – they were leaning towards using magnetic components because there were no transistors yet, but magnetic rods and diodes were available. They had excluded vacuum tubes right away because they could not be integrated into a small computer. The tasks for designing a small computer and its fundamental technical requirements were assigned at Sobolev's seminar on April 23, 1956. Brusentsov was appointed as the supervisor and executive designer of this machine, which would be based on magnetic elements and have a binary system.

Sobolev had agreed with Gutenmakher to send Brusentsov to his laboratory at the Institute for Precision Mechanics to gain experience with this sort of technology. Sobolev's clout opened doors for Brusentsov that were closed to everybody else. "They showed me their computer and supporting documentation, but to me it seemed technically weak," recalled Brusentsov.

That is when Brusentsov decided to use a trinary number system. It allowed him to create very simple and reliable elements, plus he needed seven times fewer elements than Gutenmakher. The power source requirements were significantly reduced as well because a smaller amount of magnetic rods and diodes was used. However, the main advantage was in using a natural number-coding system instead of direct, reciprocal and supplementary number coding.

Sobolev strongly supported the project and brought in many young assistants to help. By 1958, Brusentsov's 20-person team assembled by hand the first model of the computer. They named the computer Setun, after a river near Moscow University.

Brusentsov discussed the roles of the participants in the Setun project:

Sobolev was the heart and soul of this project. Unfortunately, his participation in our creative work ended in the early 1960s when he moved to Novosibirsk. All of his later involvement revolved around perpetual fighting with bureaucrats for the right to do the work we believed in.

Zhogolev was our main programmer and together with him I developed what we later called "computer architecture." He would come up with what he wanted the computer to do and I estimated how much it would cost and offered alternatives. When we settled on the trinary system, all of the architectural problems were simplified. It was important not to complicate our design, and we used to troubleshoot our ideas during the seminars with Sobolev, Semendaev and Shura-Bura.

A small team completed the project in a very short period of time. In autumn 1956 – when the idea of the trinary code emerged – the lab had four engineers and five technicians plus me. The mechanical manufacturing work on the units, frames, and the circuit boards where the elements were mounted, was done partly in the computer center workshop and partly in the workshops of the Physics Department. In addition, this was the first version of memory storage on a magnetic drum, where initially a gyroscope was employed with tube electronics. It was later replaced by a magnetic-semiconductor unit with a drum from the Ural computer.

The whole team worked inside one 60 square-meter room, filled with laboratory tables. We designed and assembled all of the devices ourselves – put together the research stands, sorted the ferrite elements and diodes, tested the cells and blocks. The work day began with "morning exercises:" everybody, including the chief, started with five ferrite cores and made preliminary tests on a stand. Using an ordinary sewing needle, they wound fifty-two coils of wire onto each core. Then the cores were passed to the assistants and technicians, who wound power-supply and control cables with five to twelve coils onto them, mounted the cells on printed cards, soldered the diodes, and provided a personal inspection mark. Then, the cells were mounted on the blocks; the signal and power-supply cables were produced next, according to the assembly schemata. After this, the testing of the block logic functions (adder, decoder, control pulse distributor, etc.) was carried out on a stand. Smaller blocks were installed on the larger blocks, and then their functions were tested. Finally, the blocks were installed onto a frame that we made and connected with an inter-block mounting cable. As a rule, everything worked fine after that. If something did go wrong, it was easy to detect and correct.

In accordance with a decree from the Soviet Cabinet of Ministers, the Kazan Mathematical Machines Factory was put in charge of mass-producing the Setun computer. The first model built at the factory was displayed at the National Exhibition in Moscow, but the second one was sent back because plant managers and officials from the Radio Ministry Industry maintained that the computer was not yet reliable and therefore not ready for mass-manufacturing.

"We were forced to manually adjust the second model of the computer made at the Kazan factory in accordance with our original documentation," Brusentsov recalled. "During testing it demonstrated 98% operational effectiveness. The only registered failure was the breakdown of a teletype diode. It also performed well in climate testing and supply-line voltage variations. On November 30, 1961, the director of the Kazan factory was forced to sign an act which ended his attempts to thwart the production of the computer."

Still, the leadership at the Kazan plant was not interested in large-scale computer production and they made only about fifteen to twenty computers annually. Soon they refused to do even that: since the Setun sold for 27,500 Rubles, they did not have sufficient financial incentive to continue. Setun's reliability spoke for itself, operating in different climatic zones: from Kaliningrad to Magadan; from Odessa and Ashkhabad to Novosibirsk and Yakutsk. It worked without any support and essentially, without spare parts. The Kazan plant issued fifty Setun computers, thirty of which worked in higher education establishments in the Soviet Union.

Setun attracted significant interest from abroad. The Ministry of Foreign Trade received many orders from East and West European customers, but none of them were filled, an anathema for the "supply and demand" oriented western minds.^[11]

Between 1961 and 1968 based on their experience with Setun, Brusentsov and Zhogolev developed the architecture of another new computer, at that time called the Setun-70. Its functioning algorithm was comprehensively described in expanded Algol-60. The first model was operating by April of 1970. Brusentsov recalled:

A year later, the modernized Setun-70 had been transformed into a structured programming computer, designed for very effective software development in which the trinary system played a key role. It had no instructions in the traditional sense, but consisted primarily of syllables: syllable-addresses, syllable-operations. The syllable's length is equal to 6 trits, or one tryte – a trinary analog of the binary byte. The command length and addresses vary according to need, beginning with the zero-address instruction. In fact, the programmer does not think about instructions but simply writes the expressions that describe the calculations as a stack of operands. These algebraic expressions are program-ready for the processor, but the algebra is supplemented by testing, control and input-output operations. The user can add his own operations to the set of syllables by inputting his own procedures, which do not reduce the computer's performance, but instead provide the ideal conditions for structured programming. As a result, the programming time is reduced by five to tenfold, with unprecedented reliability, clarity, modification possibilities, compactness, speed, etc. It is clearly the most progressive architecture, and eventually will be developed.

Unfortunately, after the Setun-70 project, Brusentsov's lab was relocated from the Computer Center at Moscow University to a windowless attic in a student dormitory and was deprived of any serious support. The new university rector considered computer design a pseudo-science. Brusentsov's original Setun computer, an experimental prototype that had faithfully worked for seventeen years, was barbarically destroyed and carted off to the dump. Brusentsov's laboratory coworkers took the Setun-70 to their attic laboratory and used it as a basis for developing the Master Work Station – an educational computer system.

To this day, Brusentsov maintains that the trinary system is superior to binary, but only time will be able to tell whether or not he is correct. Today, Brusentsov manages the computer laboratory of the Computing Mathematics and Cybernetics Department at Moscow State University. Brusentsov runs several projects connected with microcomputer education systems and programming systems. He has published over 100 scientific works, received 11 invention certificates and was awarded the Sign of Honor Order and the Large Gold Medal of the Soviet Union National Exhibition. He is also an award-winning Laureate of the USSR Council of Ministries.

^[10] Vyacheslav M. Molotov was the Soviet Union's foreign minister at that time. In 1939 he had signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler.

^[11] Translator's NoteNeither the development nor future sales of Setun were part of the Soviet State economic plan: first, Setun was a university-initiated project, and second, all employees at the Foreign Trade Ministry had fixed salaries and could not receive pay increases or bonuses for such sales. On top of this, the Soviet government discouraged the sharing of technology during the Cold War.

The Founder of Non-Traditional Computer Arithmetic

Israel Yakovlevich Akushsky was born on July 30, 1911 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, into the family of the city's head rabbi. While still a student at Moscow State University, Akushsky started working as a data analyst at the University's Mathematics and Mechanics Scientific Research Institute and later under Lazar Aronovich Lusternik – the creator of functional analysis – at the Steklov Mathematics Institute. At that time, calculation technology attracted few people, so Lusternik was an exception among mathematicians. However, the approaching war forced the rapid development of calculation technology, and the Steklov Institute received a government order to compute trajectory tables for artillery and navigation tables for military aviation. In 1939, when the Soviet Union's first calculation laboratory was founded at the Steklov, Akushsky was ordered to manage it. The volume of planned calculations was enormous, so naturally the question emerged – what instruments do we use in order to complete these tasks on time? Back then, arithmometers, abacuses, and slide-rules were the primary tools: the Soviet Union had only just begun to manufacture punch-card calculating machines. By then, IBM had already developed reliable punch card analytical machines (PCAMs) and in 1940 brought a set to Moscow to display at the State Polytechnical Museum. IBM did not produce the machines for sale, only for lease. Since the Soviet government could not buy them at that time, Akushsky managed to have some of the machines moved from the Polytechnical Museum to the Steklov Institute, where he established the country's first mechanical calculation laboratory – the precursor of electronic computer centers.

Akushsky recalled:

In 1942, the IBM Company asked the Polytechnical Museum to return the machines to the United States. Naturally, the Museum managers sent a letter to the Mathematics Institute and I was forced to come up with an answer. Returning the machines was out of the question, because it would deprive the Institute of the ability to perform important defense work.

I replied that due to wartime conditions, the government had ordered to have all valuable equipment evacuated to the far regions of the Soviet Union, were it would be safe from bombings, and at this time, we were not able to determine exactly where the equipment was located.

After the start of the war, the greater part of the Institute wasevacuated, but some of the staff, including Akushsky, remained in Moscow and worked for the Army, computing navigation tables for aviation.

Mikhail Gromov – the comrade-in-arms to the legendary pilot Valery Chkalov^[12] – visited the institute on several occasions, going directly to Akushsky for the latest results. When it was suggested that he visit the institute's top managers instead, he jokingly answered that he had enough managers of his own and would obtain the results directly from Akushsky. Sometimes, Gromov took Akushsky on short unexpected business trips; they would go out to the airfield and fly to a meeting near Saratov, the latest site for calculations. Akushsky would consult with the data analysts, check their work, and then return to Moscow the next morning.

Yet these were dangerous times. Once, in the middle of the night, Akushsky was arrested and taken to Lubyanka, the infamous KGB headquarters and prison in Moscow. His department manager had been taken there as well and they were both subjected to a ruthless interrogation:

"Are you responsible for the creation of the navigation tables for aviation flights?"

"Yes," they answered.

"Well, several days ago in the Far East, an aircraft didn't return from a special mission. We lost all radio contact with it, and if it's not found soon, you will be held responsible in accordance with war-time law."

When he got over the shock, Akushsky asked, "In the Far East?"

"Yes."

"Most likely, the navigator did not consider that crossing the 180th meridian requires a correction using the opposite sign! Do you have their flight plan?"

As soon as he received it, Akushsky calculated the possible trajectories of the aircraft, and using this data, the wreckage of the plane was found. The scientists were released with apologies.

Akushsky and his colleagues performed a tremendous amount of work right up to the end of the war. For example, they were given a special order to calculate fifty different round-trip flight plans between Moscow and Teheran. Later, they understood that it was for Stalin's flight to the "Big Three" (Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt) Teheran meeting in 1943. The relatively reliable American IBM equipment helped the laboratory successfully create the tables for flight plan angles and distances, especially for long-distance bomber aviation.

Akushsky worked with great enthusiasm, giving his all to his beloved work without any regard for time. The tables were published secretly by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. From the first months of the Great Patriotic War he became an indirect participant, assisting aircraft navigators to fly bombing missions over Berlin. A few months later, he was sent from besieged Moscow to the blockaded and starving city of Leningrad. There, he and his colleagues finished the work that they had started in Moscow, preparing calculation tables for the Naval radar systems.

At the end of 1943, Akushsky returned to Moscow. He briefed the Steklov Institute Director, Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov, about the work that they had done, and added that he would be like to quickly prepare for his Candidate's thesis on the problems of using analytical calculating machines for the solution of mathematical tasks (he was the first in the nation to propose and implement the binary system for calculations, which later became the basis for all computer technology, plus he developed the theory and calculating methods for radar navigation, surveillance and detection problems).

Vinogradov somberly replied, "I cannot release you from your laboratory duties right now. However, I'll inform you as soon as it is possible." Vinogradov always kept his word, and in February 1945, he called Akushsky to his office, saying, "I had a meeting with Marshal Zhukov^[13], and the war is coming to an end. Now you can work on your dissertation!" He then ordered for Akushsky not be disturbed during day, with the exception of the first hour in the morning.

By May Akushsky's thesis was ready, and he informed the Director. Their conversation was brief, as usual:

"Well, it will be considered at the staff meeting. Your opponents will be Academicians Lavrentiev and Semendaev."

"But Lavrentiev takes a year to answer his letters. He'll delay the response preparation!"

"Don't worry. He'll do everything on time."

"But Semendaev is very jealous of me. I've already heard what he said about my work."

"He was speaking in the corridor. I dare him to try and say the same thing at the staff meeting."

At the end of June, the responses to his thesis came in; both were positive. Professor Semendaev furnished his response in person; he wanted Akushsky to read it immediately and then asked, "So, what do you think?"

Akushsky replied: "You have praised me too much!"

Akushsky's thesis defense was set for July 5, 1945 and was very successful, although not without some initial concern, because the board members were preparing to leave for their summer holidays. A few days before the defense, Akushsky shared his anxieties with Vinogradov, who smiled and slyly replied, "I promised that you'd have your Candidate's degree by the summer and I intent to keep my word, so calm down. Our accountant was given strict orders to delay holiday pay until July 5th!"

Academician Kolmogorov was one of Akushsky's strong supporters and was present at his thesis defense. During the war, Kolmogorov had been corresponding with the famous American scientist and cybernetics pioneer, Norbert Wiener. A short while after the defense, Kolmogorov asked Akushsky to prepare a paper based on his thesis and sent it to Wiener. In 1946, when Wiener visited the Soviet Union for the first time, he was already familiar with Akushsky's work, thanks to the article. Wiener spent all of his time at the Steklov Mathematics Institute speaking with Vinogradov and Akushsky and giving lectures on cybernetics. He pointedly ignored the invitation to visit the Institute of Philosophy, where at the time, they considered cybernetics a pseudo-science.

Even during the war, Lusternik organized and ran scientific seminars on calculation theory, in which Akushsky took an active part. At that time, Bruevich was the Board Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and regularly led seminars on precision mechanics. At the end of the war, the two seminars were combined to serve as a forum for questions regarding the development of computing machines. Participants discussed the necessity for organizing a new, separate institute. Soviet-made punch-card machines were not reliable enough, and suitable only for accounting work. Analogous computational means could not provide for the advancing requirements of science and technology. Since the ideas of creating digital computers were already circulating in both the Soviet Union and abroad, the President of the Academy of Sciences at the time, Academician Sergei Vavilov, passionately supported the idea of establishing an institute. Once he published an article about it in Pravda, the plan was promptly approved by the government. In 1948, when the Institute for Precision Mechanics was established at the Academy of Sciences, it initially included Lusternik's department from the Steklov Institute along with Akushsky's laboratory, Academician Bruevich's department from the Precision Mechanics and Machine Building Institute, and Isaac Brook's department from the Power Engineering Institute, although Brook did not formally move to the new institute.

Academician Bruevich was appointed Director of the new Institute for Precision Mechanics. One year later he was followed by Lavrentiev, and in 1952 upon Lavrentiev's recommendation, the institute's directorship was turned over to Lebedev.

Yet soon after this time, the artificially concocted "Jewish problem" began surfacing in the Soviet Union. [14] Akushsky remembers this meeting with Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, the Communist Party Central Committee's Science Supervisor:

"How's the work going?" Zhdanov asked Akushsky.

"Somewhat ...uncomfortably," he answered.

"Why not pursue your research at another Republic's Academy? If you would like, I could recommend you to the President of Kazakhstan, Kunayev, as a very promising specialist who could lead the development of computational mathematics in the republic."

Akushsky understood this "recommendation" as a clear order to leave Moscow. He replied, "Thank you. I agree." And that is how the Alma-Ata period of his life began.

At the Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan, Akushsky organized the laboratory of machine and computational mathematics that later became the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics. At the same time, he lectured on the mathematics of calculations at Kazakhstan State University.

Between 1954 and 1956, Akushsky came up with an idea for creating a special computing system that would considerably accelerate the calculation process in computers. He dedicated the rest of his life to its realization. Back in Moscow late in 1956, Akushsky met with Mikhail Lesechko, the Minister of Industrial Machinery and Device Building whom he knew from before. Lesechko was very interested in computer technology and asked:

"What are you doing in Kazakhstan? You should return to Moscow and work at SKB-245."

Akushsky happily agreed. At SKB-245, Akushsky was appointed as a senior scientific staff member and later a lab manager of the mathematics department. At first, Akushsky worked on developing a computer that used a conventional system of calculation. However, his preference was to develop a system based on remainders [in Russian: Sistema schisleniya v ostatkakh, or SOK] and use it to create a computer.

In 1961, he met the Czech scientist Antonin Swoboda at a mathematical conference in Leningrad. They spend a lot of time discussing the contents of their respective presentations on the SOK. Akushsky quickly understood that he was much further ahead in his work than the Czech scientist. Obviously, Svoboda realized this also, because he replaced his original report with another one on the trinary system of calculation.

By 1957 the SKB-245 team consisted of Bazilevsky, Rameev, Yuri Schrader and Akushsky, who together started developing a computer based on a system of remainders. However, the project did not get very far, mainly because Akushsky was the only member of the team who strongly believed in the remarkable possibilities of the SOK; in 1960, when he was invited to lead a similar project at the Scientific Research Institute of Long-Distance Radio Communication, he agreed without hesitation.

The expected performance of the SOK computer was about 1.25 million operations per second, and it was successfully used in the national air defense system. This computer received a second life and was used up to the 1990s, thanks to integrated circuits.

In Czechoslovakia, the Epos computer was developed under Svoboda's supervision. It also used SOK technology, although it had lower operational speed and was practically never used.

Akushsky spent the latter part of his career working at the Zelenograd Scientific Center for Microelectronic Technology – just outside of Moscow, and I got to know him in the 1970s.

I visited Akushsky at his home several times, and met his wife Galina Petrovna, who was very involved with all of her husband's students and associates. They had no children of their own, and were like surrogate parents to all the young people who visited their home.

However, not all aspects of his life were pleasant, despite being able to patent many computational inventions in such leading countries as England, America and Japan. After Akushsky had already relocated to Zelenograd, an American became interested in collaborating to build a computer based on Akushsky's ideas and the latest cutting-edge American technology. Preliminary negotiations were underway and K.A. Valiyev, director of the Institute of Molecular Electronics, was preparing to work with modern microchips from the United States. Suddenly, Akushsky was called to meet with the "experts" (the KGB), who stated that "Zelenograd Scientific Center was not going to contribute to the intellectual enrichment of the West!" With this, all the work stopped. Unfortunately, it was not the only time when rudeness, ignorance or intrigue impeded the progress of technology and Akushsky's innovative ideas.

Dealing with his problems took their toll – he suffered a stroke, was hospitalized, and was forced to walk with a cane for a prolonged period of time. During my frequent visits, we took walks near his home and he told me lots of stories about the creation of Zelenograd, and the kindness of F. V. Lukin, Valiyev, and Malinin. He considered them the real "founders of the city," excellent scientists and planners. The only person, about whom he spoke with restraint, was Phillip George Staros.

Akushsky had the ability to find a common language and mutual understanding with all kinds of people – from the engineers to scientists at the Academy Presidium. Although he was not a Communist party member, he had a very good relationship with the party leadership in Zelenograd, even with the city administrators.

Akushsky was very disappointed that the Soviet comput