Exactly 35 years ago, the first in the history IBM PC went on sale. But long before that day — in 1960-s, one of the centers of Soviet Cybernetics was in Belarus. Let us remember the story of a family of computing machinery "Minsk" which won All-Union glory and then lost it.
The gap between the western countries in the field of computer technology in the 1950s, according to the most optimistic estimates, was at least 10 years. Therefore, in August 1956, the decision of the USSR Council of Ministers was the start of the expansion of the production of electronic computers across the country. Resolution also provided for the establishment of centres for their production, design and development, one of which was supposed to stay in the BSSR.
Soon in Minsk Ordzhonikidze Plant was opened, and already in 1958, Special Design Bureau (SDB) was organized on its base for support and upgrades produced by the computer. Subsequently, the SDB was transformed into an independent design and research company - NIIEVM working to this day.
"Minsk-1" - the first original Belarusian computer
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*First-generation computer Minsk-1*
The first completely original project of the plant became a computer titled "Minsk-1". Development of the device occurred in a fairly short time - 18 months in parallel with the design of the machine, they also worked on preparing its series production.
Computer Testing took place in September 1960, the same year appeared the first production samples. The speed of their work was estimated at 2.5 thousand operations per second (for comparison: the speed developed by the Moscow Institute of Electronic Control Machines computer M-3 was about 30 operations per second).
Achieving these results was obtained, including through the use of high-speed memory on ferrite cores, which replaced the aging of memory on magnetic drums (in appearance resembled a tank of a washing machine).
Ferrite cores were small rings of special magnetic alloy 1.5 mm in diameter. For the "Minsk-1" there were required to order 80 thousand such rings.
Ferrite core memory.
Programming for this computer was carried out in machine code, but in the "delivery" of the machine included a library of 100 programs consisting of 7.5 thousand teams. Also for "Minsk-1" have been developed some of the world's first autoprogramming systems — translators "Autocode Inzhener" and "Autocode Economist".
Another competitive advantage of the machine become relatively modest size. It took about 4 square meters of space to accommodate the entire system, while some other computers (for example, the Moscow BESM) took as much as 100 square meters.
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