Evgeny Kanevsky: “The state did not see the great future of small equipment”



    We decided to supplement the DataArt museum collection with interviews with people who influenced the history of IT. Last time we talked with Sergei Zonov , the creator of one of the main clones of the Spectrum. This week, our hero, a leading researcher at the Institute of Regional Economics of the Academy of Sciences of Russia, Evgeny Kanevsky, is one of the scientists who stood at the origins of Soviet computing. Now he is engaged in text analysis systems, and in an interview he told how in the 1960s he developed the small-sized Vega and EDM, and in the 1970s - Iskra-226.

    1958: service group


    - I entered the system of the Academy of Sciences in 1958 after graduating from the Physics Department of Leningrad University. My specialty was actually different - high-frequency technology, klystrons, magnetrons - but they persuaded me: "Computer technology is just beginning, everything is ahead."


    Fontanka Embankment, 27. Here and now is the St. Petersburg branch of the
    Mathematical Institute. V.A. Steklova RAS

    Our institution has changed its name several times. Initially, it was the Leningrad Branch of the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences (Steklov Mathematical Institute). When I arrived, a computer center was just organized here. There are very few employees - two to three people. We were immediately sent for an internship at the University, which received one of the first production vehicles “Ural-1”. We found ourselves there with colleagues with whom we had studied together before. The car was mastered all together, and then went to Penza to get their own. Threesomes - a girl and two guys.

    - What did the receipt process look like?
    - The car was installed, several tests were launched and they say: “See, it works! Now we take it apart, pack it and ship it to you. ” They brought to Leningrad: “Take it away!” And we ourselves, several people, without any loaders dragged these hefty heavy blocks. They brought it into the big hall, unpacked, assembled, turned it on, and it worked.

    The car was big enough. (Occupied 70–80 square meters. - Approx. Ed.) Height - two meters. There were two pedestals in front. She worked in a binary system. Relatively small by today's standards, the memory on a magnetic drum, which was spinning all the time. Input - from a punched tape. Productivity - about a hundred operations per second. They set the task for two or three hours, the simplest.


    "Ural-1" - the first serial Soviet computer

    - Who put it?
    - Mathematicians. Since the performance is very small, there were relatively few tasks. The machine worked around the clock in three shifts - from 8 to 16, from 16 to 24 and from 24 to 8. I got into the service group. We were on duty on two, at night there were no buffets, of course. The tea itself was brewed, and that’s it. We rested in the next room, designed for sambo training. If everything was in order, you could take turns sleeping for an hour or two on the mats.

    - What were your responsibilities?
    - We made sure that the car worked. She went out of order quite often. It was necessary to identify the defective element, pull it out of the connector using special forceps and replace it. Then a separate group of electromechanics dealt with faulty elements.

    Periodically there were problems with the drum. I don’t know how others do, but on our machine he was very responsive to temperature. If it's hot, you had to open the window. If it's cold, close it.

    - What tasks did the machine solve?
    “We didn't know that.” Young boys and girls who just graduated from the institute - at first we did not understand anything at all in this matter. They only knew why this does not work here, but here it is. Well, how to fix it.

    - Often you were awakened at night: "Get up, the car broke down"?
    - It happened once, a normal situation. Sometimes we worked on Saturdays and Sundays - when mathematicians persuaded us. Often, when a good company gathered, they would sit down to play preference. But if something broke, the cards aside - and repaired.

    This went on for a year and a half. But when they tried to persuade me to come here, they invited me not to service the car, but to do scientific work. Finally, the institution fulfilled its obligations: I was released from service. First, they gave to finish the work that someone else started. Nothing interesting happened - I kind of wrote an article, but it did not go anywhere. And then we organized a laboratory for the development of small-sized machines under the leadership of Vladimir Borisovich Marakhovsky.

    1960s: Vega


    - After Ural-1, Minsk and BESM computers appeared in the USSR. If it was necessary to do something simply and quickly, so-called electromechanical machines were used. Their best examples were German: Mercedes 20-bit and 12-bit Rheinmetal. The Kursk plant produced VMM-2 - its own version of Rheinmetal, but, unfortunately, much worse quality. They didn’t give good steel - it was only with the military, and the Germans made from Swedish, which at that time was considered the best.

    By 1960, Marakhovsky and the company (engineers of the Leningrad branch of the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences. - Ed.) Developed a relay machine called the Neva. It seems that they started the series in Penza, but it went neither shakily nor swell. At this time, the simplest transistor elements appeared, and we contacted the so-called ferrite-transistor element. It was a small cube from which a transistor protruded from above. We managed to create a trigger out of three such elements that can store information, and the idea arose to make an electronic machine - like the Rheinmetal or the Mercedes. A year in 1960 or 1961, we took up this business.

    - Why were small-sized cars needed?
    “To replace Rheinmetal and Mercedes.” Very often, a person needs to count something - multiply, divide, etc., five numbers. Doing this on a slide rule is completely uninteresting. Even before the war, there were arithmometers on which you need to turn the knob, and, shifting the carriage, make calculations. Three times I turned the pen - three times added some numbers. He moved it, twisted it twice, which means that you will already have multiplication by tens. True, it was impossible to share.

    Rheinmetall and Mercedes did all four, but there weren’t enough cars. We, in my opinion, had one copy of one and the other, and often had to be considered. Even today, if a mathematician is some kind of task, he always needs a preliminary calculation, and for him you need to have something at hand. Of course, no one suspected the possibilities of personalization.

    As a result, we made the car in half with sin. They called it “Vega” by the name of the star, although evil languages ​​claimed that according to the names of the authors: Vladimir, Eugene and Galina (Galina Ivanovna Menderskaya - Ed.), The first letters formed just in VEGA. But then we did not even think about this.


    "Vega". Prototype

    - What was Vega capable of?
    “She could add, subtract, multiply, divide and extract the square root — something that no electromechanical machine did.” She had 20 decimal places and, as we called her, a "natural comma." That is, one could type as a person writes: “Two comma five times three comma thirty eight ...” And this is the result. Some plant undertook to make an electroluminescent indicator for us, which was supplied with about 25 volts, and we developed the first eight-element matrix.


    Vega prototype inside

    - How long did it take to develop Vega?
    - About a year and a half. Five people worked. Three main designers: Marakhovsky, Kanevsky, Menderskaya. Arkhangelsky immediately left us and almost did not work on Vega. Another person was engaged in elements - he participated in the development of the trigger. Everyone made some piece of his own.

    - How did you celebrate the birth of Vega?
    - I don’t remember, it was too long. But in those days it was possible to calmly buy a bottle of wine, bring it to work, and before leaving home to drink half a cup or cup. They bought, as a rule, dry - we didn’t drink anything special then.

    - What did you need to do in order for Vega to be mass-produced?
    - The Ministry of Instruments, Automation Means and Control Systems (PSAISU) was engaged in such matters. When we got there, it turned out that we had competitors - friends from the University, in whom we had practice at one time, developed a similar electronic machine. Well, Penza, realizing that the relay does not work out very well, also developed her own version. They arranged a competitive commission, talked, argued. In the end, they announced that the two cars are very good - ours and the university. They were not interested in the Penza machine, but we were offered to look for a factory ourselves. Then the government made a very big mistake, not clutching at these cars. For their sake, it was worth giving up everything else.

    - You tried to convince the leadership?
    - No one listened. We say: “It is necessary!” And they answered: “We are busy with others, there are no free capacities. Everyone has a hard plan. ”

    Our colleagues from the University went to Minsk and tried to do something there, but the car did not go into production. Marakhovsky and I went to Kursk. They released VMM-2 and tried to beat it off with all their might, because it did not work out for them - there was no good steel. The plant turned out to be completely unprepared for Vega, because it specialized only in mechanics. They did not have a single one, not that an electronic engineer - a normal electrician. Director Karchevsky a year before retirement was not interested in anything. We talked with the chief engineer Nikolaev. Imagine two young guys arrived and say: “Rebuild the factory!” But people work for him, he has to pay his salary ... But he took a chance. A group gathered - several installers and we. Constantly went on business trips to them. In the first year of eight months I spent there. Together we put together a car


    Eugene Kanevsky with colleagues at the exhibition of VDNH, 1966 (?) Year

    - What difficulties did you encounter?
    - For a start, it was necessary to get transistors, which were not sold in large quantities in the store. Ferrite transistor element - what is it? There is a transistor type P15, P16 and a small piece of ferrite in the form of a ring, on which a very thin wire must be wound. Mostly women wound as people more calm and restrained, with a thin needle. It was necessary not to break the wire, then gently solder the ends to the conclusions.

    Transistors needed to be selected and checked. It was possible to get them by military acceptance, then a range of gain was indicated on each transistor. If it was very small or extra-large, this did not suit us - such elements did not work.

    The plant with great difficulty managed to break through the production of Vega. Strength and experience were few. At this time in 1961, a large number of different machines began to appear around the world - in Germany, Italy, Japan. Each year, plants doubled their output, and Kursk could increase the volume by only 20%. Each car was distributed by the ministry, everyone wanted to have it - it worked.


    "Vega". Factory option

    - Everyone wants to, but nothing is being done to expand production?
    - These are the shortcomings of the planned economy. Some say that they want to have, the second answer: "You do not need anything, get along, live as before." The state failed to see the big future for small equipment. The big one saw: one plant, another plant ... Then they began to make medium-sized machines - Setun, Hrazdan. Academics connected to this Ukrainian. But to put on the table, double-click and get some result - this was not.

    EDM


    - After some time, the military turned to us. They say: "Your machine seems to be nothing, but we have topographers who die without trigonometric functions." They need to consider trigonometry, and not on what. There are only Bradis tables and a slide rule, the accuracy of which is very low. We immediately asked for a factory. They identified the Ufa Instrument-Making, at that time producing some instruments for aviation. And we made an electronic 10-key computer computer EDM. She had 16, not 20 categories. The military said it was enough for them.

    - What could the computer do?
    - If Vega had only three registers (it did addition and subtraction on two, the third was used in multiplication for accumulation and for calculating the square root), the computer had four. In addition to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, accumulation, she calculated the sine and arctangent. Making trigonometry was not easy. At that time, large machines appeared, in addition to Ural-1. We received BESM-6 and with its help began to search for a technique. Usually trigonometry is considered differently - more accurately, shortly and quickly. But for this we need more than four registers, which immediately increased the size of the car, but we really did not want this.


    General view of the computer

    We started the car and, at the request of the military, made an adapter to it so that we could connect the standard STA-2M telegraph apparatus. This was necessary in order to transmit the results of the calculations to another place via the communication line - as if to immediately send a telegram. In addition, the results could be printed. In fact, the car had a printer, only a very inconvenient one.


    Communication device for computer

    The plant launched the car in series. After some time, the luminescent indicators were replaced with neon lamps, considering that it was more reliable. How long Vega existed, I don’t know, and the EDM-P (print version) was also used in the troops in the mid-1980s. Unlike any calculators, it worked at a temperature of 0 to 40 degrees. I must say, 0 - the temperature is generally very bad, condensation forms during it and the most unpleasant things happen to the devices.

    Copyright certificates


    - When we did Vega, we wrote applications for copyright certificates. They were not given to us for a long time, in the end, when the plant was already starting production, the chief engineer called the ministry. They called us to Moscow and began to sort it out. It turned out that this is the first certificate on an electronic machine. We were also asked: “Why did you put everything in one pile? We had to write 10 small applications - it would be easier for us. ”


    Copyright certificate dated 1966.

    When the car went into series, according to the law of the Soviet Union, we began to receive money.

    - On the last page of your certificate it says: 560 rubles for the invention. Then another 2113 rubles, 960 rubles. Is that a lot of money?
    - Yes. A bottle of wine then cost 2 rubles 12 kopecks. My salary was 120 rubles.

    Then we got three patents abroad - in Germany, Italy and France. If they wanted to use the license, we would get a lot of money in foreign currency. But they did not want to.

    “Maybe they already have something of their own?”
    - Not. When we made the first "Vega", they had cars that performed four actions. No square root was extracted at that time. When we made the computer, square-root machines appeared, but there was no trigonometry anywhere. In this sense, we were ahead of them.

    Then we got copyright on electronic computers and also some money, and already in the 1990s we learned that military exercises were held in the GDR already in the 1980s, and topographers used electronic computers-P. It turned out that this is the best machine: it could transmit data by telegraph, it worked on battery power and was reliable. It struck us, we thought that it had been a long time and the trace had caught a cold.

    1970s: Iskra-226


    - Our colleague Heinrich Valerievich Lezin began to engage in a new industry - microprogramming. Then we started working on the Iskra-226 machine. They did it on the instructions of the same ministry PSAISU. Then the USSR bought American Vang-2200 cars. We decided that you need to have your own car with exactly the same command system. The ministry immediately said there would be an institute. That was already in the 1970s.

    - That is, in the 1960s you yourself were looking for a plant, but here the state already understood the prospect?
    - Yes, only a lot of time has gone. There was already a “Vang-2200” abroad, machines of this series began to be made, the first microprocessors appeared. Very small, weak - by 4 digits, by 8. We began to make the machine already on integrated circuits, and not ferrite-transistor elements.

    From “Wang” we took only the command system. Everything was done absolutely in its own way, received copyright certificates in a fairly large number. We did not repeat anything, not only programmatically, but also technically. If we began to repeat, we would have to buy a license, but the government did not want this.

    The same Kursk let out the car. In size, it was quite large, had additional memory on a magnetic drum measuring as much as 5 megabytes. The drum is Bulgarian, the seal is German, Gedeer. Long-term memory was only on large diskettes - now there are none left. It was possible to write in the languages ​​“Fort” or “Basic”.

    - Who worked at Iskra?
    - Many people, mostly mathematicians. The accountant could also work on the appropriate programs. This machine had a very small screen in the form of a tube, a keyboard of the same type as now on personal computers, games, some kind of entertainment.

    - What kind?
    - The simplest ones are some kind of horoscopes, races ... They were taken because the Wang system existed. Most likely, it was a copy. We had no direct relation to this topic, and with a small screen it was not very interesting to play.

    - Why did the state understand the importance of what you are doing in the 1970s?
    - I do not know. Having made “Vega” first, then EDM, we did not advance them at the top, we walked away from the device. The state, as it were, realized that it was missing something, because the whole world was developing in this direction. If we compare the number of cars that were produced before the advent of calculators, we and other countries, these are completely different numbers. And not an order of magnitude, but two, three. Abroad, the issue grew instantly, calculators appeared at any cash desks.


    Appearance of Iskra-226

    Further, our name "electronic-keyboard computer" (ECM) has disappeared. We called Iskra-226 “a software-controlled electronic keyboard computer” (PEKVM) - it is also gone. Small ones began to be called calculators, and we have launched their production in quite a large number. But the medium did not release. The Institute for the Development of Electronic Machines, with which we created Iskra-226, together with Kursk began to make a number of machines called Iskra - Iskra One Hundred and Something - for economic calculations. The Iskra-200 series appeared, which later degenerated into a copy of a modern personal machine. Apart from Kursk, no one made them in our country, and abroad - everywhere and in large numbers. As a result, they began to simply buy them in Russia.

    - At what point did the lag become such that it was already impossible to catch up?
    - When the personals appeared with us. In the era of perestroika, when my salary became very bad, for two years I went to teach computer science at school. For practical exercises, the 9th grade had devices that emulated simple BASIC commands. I talked about Basic, what to do with it. Then the guys made a small program. Each has only a remote control with indication and dialing. And the next class already worked on staff. Moreover, most of them were of Kursk production. Then the degree of integration became such that we began to lag behind, and the gates that had previously been closed opened.
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