Pioneers of Soviet Computing
Title: Pioneers of Soviet Computing
Date: 2010(2nd ed.)
Author(s): Boris Nikolaevich Malinovsky
Editor(s): Anne Fitzpatrick (ed.); Emmanuel Aronie (trans.); and Kate Maldonado (ed. Consultant)
Description: Electronic book, 201 pp.
Abstract: Boris N. Malinovsky’s Pioneers of Soviet Computing is the English language version of his earlier Russian language The History of Computing in Personalities. Partly technical history and partly a memoir, it is the only existing first person account of the birth of modern computing in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. It chronicles the life and work of renowned Soviet computer scientists S.A. Lebedev, V.M. Glushkov, N.P. Brusentsov, I.S. Brook, and many others. It describes numerous indigenous and original Soviet computer hardware projects from the end of the Second World War through the decades that followed, interlaced with commentary on the Soviet political and social systems that constrained rapid and free technological advancement. In addition, this work reviews the various Russian and Ukrainian computing schools ranging from the highly philosophical cybernetics and artificial intelligence to the applied defense computing institutions supporting the military and weapons enterprises. The epic effort to mass produce the Unified System (ES) series of computers – based on the IBM 360 design - is described in depth, along with the political and bureaucratic intrigue and personal and technological struggles that accompanied.
Subjects: Soviet Union, USSR, Electronic Computing, Science, Defense, MESM, BESM, ES, Elbrus, Setun, Cybernetics, Control Computers, Ternary.
Citation: Malinovsky, Boris Nikolaevich. Pioneers of Soviet Computing. Edited by Anne Fitzpatrick. Translated by Emmanuel Aronie. N.p.: published electronically, 2010. http://www.sigcis.org/files/sigcismc2010_001.pdf.
Notes: This pdf book is available free of charge but users are required to observe the rules of the Creative Commons license for this at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/.
