5 ms·

> a lot of excellent engineers and scientist that worked on technology in USSR. Name me THREE scientific achievements "made in USSR" which ordinary people stil

> a lot of excellent engineers and scientist that worked on technology in USSR. Name me THREE scientific achievements "made in USSR" which ordinary people still use in their daily lives. No, AK machine gun will not do. And sputnik is no go as well - nobody listens to radio beeps nowadays. Can you? Just three of them? Surely, 70 years of scientific achievements will do wonders, right?

gm-conspiracy 9y ago
Soft contact lenses? Synthetic diamonds? That's two off the top of my head.
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  Soft contact lenses were invented by Czech scientists. Synthetic diamonds were created by French chemist in 19th century.
  - avmich 9y ago
    And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. What are you trying to prove? That inventions aren't done in vacuum and everybody stands on the shoulders of giants coming before him? Or you literally believe that USA had a half century Cold War with opponent who can't invent a thing?
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      > And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. Russians? Not Chinese or British or Americans, but Russians? I'm amazed on number of Russian myths here.
Robotbeat 9y ago
Yet another lame comment. GPS launched on Atlas V nowadays, which uses the insanely good LOx-rich combustion Soviet engine tech. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, American engineers believed such technology was basically impossible. It was Soviet metallurgy that made it possible. Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate.
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  > Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate Are you telling me that Soviets invented GPS?
  - usaphp 9y ago
    Did you read his comment?
  - avmich 9y ago
    The idea of measuring distance by the time of signal having known speed probably predates Newton. Atomic clocks - one of the technological enablements to a satellite navigation system - were initially created with masers which Basov and Prokhorov helped to invent. You already know about the technology to launch those precise clocks to orbit.
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      So, GPS wasn't invented by Soviets and nobody is listening to Soviet radiobeats. What's your point then?
      - avmich 9y ago
        My point is that people miss points :) .
      - Robotbeat 9y ago
        Sputnik was the first satellite. Everyone with a smartphone relies on satellites. GPS is a more sophisticated radio beep, but Sputnik is essentially the proof of concept of the idea.
        PerfectDlite 9y ago
        Sputnik was a proof of GPS concept? That's... amazing.
baursak 9y ago
NASA cannot get stuff into space anymore without Soviet rockets. That's today, now.
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  SpaceX? Blue Orion? ULA + Ball Aerospace?
  - usaphp 9y ago
    The main reason of space x existence is exactly the outcome of the OP point
    - avmich 9y ago
      No, that's not true - and it's sad to read on HN. I'm pretty sure Elon Musk would press ahead disregarding Russian involvement, given the available information.
      - usaphp 9y ago
        He would but the government would not be forced to give him a contract and subsidy him. He even had to go to court to sue Air Force for giving important national contracts to Russia: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lawsuit-against-the-air-force-2014-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lawsuit-against-the...
oscii 9y ago
- Lasers - TV (Boris Rosing, Vladimir Zworykin) - Nuclear power plant - Artificial heart - Microwave owen (1941)
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  1. Lasers? Invented by Soviets? 2. Vladimir Zworykin was a Soviet scientist? Really? 3. First soviet nuclear power plant was highly classified. First commercial nuclear power plant was created in US. 4. Artificial heart - for a dog. Not for a human. 5. And as for microwave oven in 1941 - is this another Russian myth?
  - arethuza 9y ago
    "The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Windscale, England, was opened in 1956" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power
    - oscii 9y ago
      That's commercial achievement, not scientific. The Obninsk power plant has been connected to a grid in 1954. It is useless to assess commercial achievements of the country which didn't have commerce at all. And in general, the question "who was the first" is unproductive, as science doesn't have nationality.
      - PerfectDlite 9y ago
        > The Obninsk power plant has been connected to a grid in 1954 Are you aware that Obninsk was a "closed" city and wasn't marked on the Soviet maps initially? So whole town was classified, among the power plant.
        detaro 9y ago
        Why is that relevant at all to the discussion?
patrickg_zill 9y ago
LASIK derived from RK - the Soviets were trying to save on having to grind prescription glasses for people - the cornea would be removed, frozen in nitrogen to be stiffer, then placed on a machine that had 1-micron accuracy which then modified the cornea by essentially machining it; then the cornea would be re-attached.
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  > save on having to grind prescription glasses for people Are you implying that removing cornea and re-attaching it will be _cheaper_ than grinding prescription glasses?
- pinewurst 9y ago
  RK was/is very much a Soviet invention, but it's not the same as external corneal reshaping (I can't remember the real term). RK uses corneal incisions to flatten the curvature without removal.
EthanHeilman 9y ago
1. Medicine: Advanced phage therapy >'Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Russian scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. [..] However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world.[16][17] A summary of these publications was published in English in 2009 in "A Literature Review of the Practical Application of Bacteriophage Research"' 2. Electronics: Léon Theremin work in the Soviet Union which is the basis of RFID technologies [1] [2]. 3. History: Knorozov work deciphering the Mayan glyphs. He work put modern Mayan studies on a firm foundation. [3] 4. Physics: Much of the developments in dynamical systems came from "the Moscow School": >"A more abstract approach, developed in Moscow, gained attention outside the U.S.S.R. via the translation of (Nemytskii and Stepanov, 1960), introduced by S. Lefschetz, who had himself published a text on qualitative theory a few years earlier (Lefschetz 1957). Here the first clearly-defined strange attractor – the solenoid – was described. The works of Kolmogorov, Anosov, Arnold and Sinai grew out of this "Moscow school" in the 1950-60's, with important work on ergodic theory (Sinai, 1966), geodesic flows (Anosov, 1967) and billiards (Sinai, 1970), using Kolmogorov's idea of K-systems. Some of this was motivated by S. Smale's visit to Moscow in 1961, during which he met Anosov, Arnold and Sinai and told them of the conjecture that structurally stable systems with infinitely many periodic orbits could exist (see Smale's Horseshoe, below)." [4] 5. Computer Science/Complexity Theory: "The concept of NP-completeness was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in parallel by researchers in the US and the USSR." The list is very long and I don't have all day so I'm stopping here but people living in the Soviet Union made many important scientific achievements. This is not an endorsement of the Soviet Union (see Theremin's poor treatment). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Return_to_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Return_to_t... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov#Key_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov#Key_research [4]: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/History_of_dynamical_systems#Andronov.2C_Pontryagin_and_the_Moscow_School http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/History_of_dynamical_sys... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook%E2%80%93Levin_theorem#Contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook%E2%80%93Levin_theorem#Con...

gm-conspiracy 9y ago

Soft contact lenses? Synthetic diamonds? That's two off the top of my head.

PerfectDlite 9y ago
Soft contact lenses were invented by Czech scientists. Synthetic diamonds were created by French chemist in 19th century.
- avmich 9y ago
  And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. What are you trying to prove? That inventions aren't done in vacuum and everybody stands on the shoulders of giants coming before him? Or you literally believe that USA had a half century Cold War with opponent who can't invent a thing?
  - PerfectDlite 9y ago
    > And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. Russians? Not Chinese or British or Americans, but Russians? I'm amazed on number of Russian myths here.

Robotbeat 9y ago

Yet another lame comment. GPS launched on Atlas V nowadays, which uses the insanely good LOx-rich combustion Soviet engine tech. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, American engineers believed such technology was basically impossible. It was Soviet metallurgy that made it possible. Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate.

PerfectDlite 9y ago
> Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate Are you telling me that Soviets invented GPS?
- usaphp 9y ago
  Did you read his comment?
- avmich 9y ago
  The idea of measuring distance by the time of signal having known speed probably predates Newton. Atomic clocks - one of the technological enablements to a satellite navigation system - were initially created with masers which Basov and Prokhorov helped to invent. You already know about the technology to launch those precise clocks to orbit.
  - PerfectDlite 9y ago
    So, GPS wasn't invented by Soviets and nobody is listening to Soviet radiobeats. What's your point then?
    - avmich 9y ago
      My point is that people miss points :) .
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      Sputnik was the first satellite. Everyone with a smartphone relies on satellites. GPS is a more sophisticated radio beep, but Sputnik is essentially the proof of concept of the idea.
      - PerfectDlite 9y ago
        Sputnik was a proof of GPS concept? That's... amazing.

baursak 9y ago

NASA cannot get stuff into space anymore without Soviet rockets. That's today, now.

patrickg_zill 9y ago
SpaceX? Blue Orion? ULA + Ball Aerospace?
- usaphp 9y ago
  The main reason of space x existence is exactly the outcome of the OP point
  - avmich 9y ago
    No, that's not true - and it's sad to read on HN. I'm pretty sure Elon Musk would press ahead disregarding Russian involvement, given the available information.
    - usaphp 9y ago
      He would but the government would not be forced to give him a contract and subsidy him. He even had to go to court to sue Air Force for giving important national contracts to Russia: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lawsuit-against-the-air-force-2014-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lawsuit-against-the...

oscii 9y ago

- Lasers - TV (Boris Rosing, Vladimir Zworykin) - Nuclear power plant - Artificial heart - Microwave owen (1941)

PerfectDlite 9y ago
1. Lasers? Invented by Soviets? 2. Vladimir Zworykin was a Soviet scientist? Really? 3. First soviet nuclear power plant was highly classified. First commercial nuclear power plant was created in US. 4. Artificial heart - for a dog. Not for a human. 5. And as for microwave oven in 1941 - is this another Russian myth?
- arethuza 9y ago
  "The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Windscale, England, was opened in 1956" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power
  - oscii 9y ago
    That's commercial achievement, not scientific. The Obninsk power plant has been connected to a grid in 1954. It is useless to assess commercial achievements of the country which didn't have commerce at all. And in general, the question "who was the first" is unproductive, as science doesn't have nationality.
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      > The Obninsk power plant has been connected to a grid in 1954 Are you aware that Obninsk was a "closed" city and wasn't marked on the Soviet maps initially? So whole town was classified, among the power plant.
      - detaro 9y ago
        Why is that relevant at all to the discussion?

patrickg_zill 9y ago

LASIK derived from RK - the Soviets were trying to save on having to grind prescription glasses for people - the cornea would be removed, frozen in nitrogen to be stiffer, then placed on a machine that had 1-micron accuracy which then modified the cornea by essentially machining it; then the cornea would be re-attached.

PerfectDlite 9y ago
> save on having to grind prescription glasses for people Are you implying that removing cornea and re-attaching it will be _cheaper_ than grinding prescription glasses?
pinewurst 9y ago
RK was/is very much a Soviet invention, but it's not the same as external corneal reshaping (I can't remember the real term). RK uses corneal incisions to flatten the curvature without removal.

EthanHeilman 9y ago

1. Medicine: Advanced phage therapy >'Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Russian scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. [..] However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world.[16][17] A summary of these publications was published in English in 2009 in "A Literature Review of the Practical Application of Bacteriophage Research"' 2. Electronics: Léon Theremin work in the Soviet Union which is the basis of RFID technologies [1] [2]. 3. History: Knorozov work deciphering the Mayan glyphs. He work put modern Mayan studies on a firm foundation. [3] 4. Physics: Much of the developments in dynamical systems came from "the Moscow School": >"A more abstract approach, developed in Moscow, gained attention outside the U.S.S.R. via the translation of (Nemytskii and Stepanov, 1960), introduced by S. Lefschetz, who had himself published a text on qualitative theory a few years earlier (Lefschetz 1957). Here the first clearly-defined strange attractor – the solenoid – was described. The works of Kolmogorov, Anosov, Arnold and Sinai grew out of this "Moscow school" in the 1950-60's, with important work on ergodic theory (Sinai, 1966), geodesic flows (Anosov, 1967) and billiards (Sinai, 1970), using Kolmogorov's idea of K-systems. Some of this was motivated by S. Smale's visit to Moscow in 1961, during which he met Anosov, Arnold and Sinai and told them of the conjecture that structurally stable systems with infinitely many periodic orbits could exist (see Smale's Horseshoe, below)." [4] 5. Computer Science/Complexity Theory: "The concept of NP-completeness was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in parallel by researchers in the US and the USSR." The list is very long and I don't have all day so I'm stopping here but people living in the Soviet Union made many important scientific achievements. This is not an endorsement of the Soviet Union (see Theremin's poor treatment). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Return_to_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Return_to_t... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov#Key_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov#Key_research [4]: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/History_of_dynamical_systems#Andronov.2C_Pontryagin_and_the_Moscow_School http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/History_of_dynamical_sys... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook%E2%80%93Levin_theorem#Contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook%E2%80%93Levin_theorem#Con...