History of Computer Devices in Russia

Rating:
Summary: Another separate history
Review: Gripping reading for those interested in computers. If you are indeed one of these people, then you probably are quite familiar with the history of computing in the US, Europe and Japan. Well, actually most of the effort was in the US. With the notable exceptions of Alan Turing and Claude Shannon, who were British and Irish, much of the groundbreaking work in computing was done in America.

And much of it in the context of the Cold War. Which accounts for the fascination of this book. Utterly impossible to write during that War, the authors have performed a valuable service, by revealing a parallel universe. You see, during the Cold War, in the free world, one rarely heard about Soviet computing. The one notable exception was in 1984/5, when a computer magazine described a Macintosh clone from Russia, called the Agatha. But that, like Yugoslavia's Yugo car, gained little traction elsewhere.

Readers will notice a key difference between the Soviet computing effort and our own. Theirs was almost entirely black; enclosed within their military industrial complex. Soviet domestic consumer products, like the Agatha, were clunky and rare. In part because a personal computer, especially if it had a printer attached, was a potential printing press for samizdat. This always crippled their efforts.

The book describes how Soviet computing focused on the high end, to match the American effort, especially in supercomputers. But always one step (at least!) behind. The names of the Soviet researchers will probably also be unknown to you. But at least here and now, they get some belated recognition for their achievements.