6 ms·

Soviet Calculators History (1998)

89 points by erikbye 7y ago

FillardMillmore 7y ago
> In general, the first models of calculators had their own operational language, and the user had to learn the specific procedures related to each calculator. Let's take, for example, the C3-07, the first calculator of the Series "C" manufactured by the Leningrad factory "Svetlana." Forgive the focus on tangential information, but I'm curious, was this factory named after Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva? If so, it would seem a little strange that the factory would remain in the '70s with this name long after Khrushchev's secret speech and the subsequent de-Stalinization that took place to deconstruct the influence of Stalin's cult of personality. I can't seem to find any real info on the factory with a google search, but does strike me as curious.
- erikbye 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_(company)
  - FillardMillmore 7y ago
    D'oh! I must have used too many search terms in my query. Thanks for providing the link. Appears the company was founded in the late 1800s, so certainly not named after Stalin's daughter.
- rdtsc 7y ago
  A sibling post noticed it seems to be an abbreviation related to electrical lights, but it is worth mentioning that Svetlana is just a common name. Like say, Jenny or Stacy. A few my teachers had that name, for example. The shortened version, "Sveta" is also common. It would be different, for example, if it was an extremely rare name shared with Stalin's daughter.
  - FillardMillmore 7y ago
    Yes, it would appear it is a common name in Russia. Though, in the late '70s (and perhaps even now), I believe Stalin's daughter was still the most famous person bearing the name. And me being ignorant of both this particular factory and its origins couldn't help but wonder (knowing the Soviet propensity for naming things in honor of the leaders - e.g. Stalingrad, Leningrad, etc.) if there happened to be any relation.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - pandaman 7y ago
      I can see how you could get confused. "Svetlana" is a strange name since it hasn't been used to name real people until early 20th century. The most famous Svetlana had always been the character from the eponimous poem. The name had been used to name things, places and literally characters but not real people since it has not been recognized by the Church. So, in a sense, it is the Stalin's daughter who is named after the factory.
    - anticodon 7y ago
      In Soviet Union places were named in honor of the people that did something good for the country. Stalin's daughter didn't do anything significant in her life - why would anyone name anything in honor of her????? People in the West has so perverse understanding of Russian/Soviet realities due to exorbitant amount of anti-Russian and especially anti-Soviet propaganda. I wonder if there was even a single positive thing ever published on the West about USSR. And people laugh at me when I say I don't believe any news (they believe they're becoming enlightened by reading or watching fake news which is any news source).
      - FillardMillmore 7y ago
        I see the ignorance of my question now - essentially the question was borne out of a lack of knowledge about how common the name 'Svetlana' is. The only 'Svetlana' I knew about was Stalin's daughter. My brain made a connection where one didn't exist. You are most certainly correct about the lack of understanding in the West about Russian/Soviet realities. Do you have any books you'd recommend to aid in an understanding of this? I recently picked up 'Everyday Stalinism' by Sheila Fitzpatrick - focusing on the lives of the average person during Stalin's time in power but it certainly casts a more negative light on this time than positive. With that said, I'd be more than interested in reading accounts that cast a more positive light on things. I've also read 'Khrushchev Lied' by Grover Furr - this book focuses more on half-truths and omissions of truth made in Khrushchev's secret speech about Stalin. Reading about Grover's history, it would seem he is not entirely unbiased but there were details in there that gave pause for thought. As for whether there was anything positive published in the West about the USSR, have you heard about Walter Duranty's writing for the New York Times and the subsequent Pulitzer Prize? That is, of course, a somewhat facetious example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty There were certainly positive things written about the USSR during the war (as they became allies with Western forces), with Stalin being affectionately called 'Uncle Joe' - things of course got less positive during the Cold War and the Red Scare. Are there no news sources you trust? Aren't there news reports that cite primary evidence that you would deem as trustworthy? And if you don't get your current info from news sources, where do you get it from?
ruslan 7y ago
I loved my MK 85 a lot! When I was at school in late 80s I used to store complex physics and trigonometrics formulas in it as a BASIC program text. Those days using calculators was allowed on exams so this little electronic cheat-sheet saved my sole many times :-).
- savoytruffle 7y ago
  A computational cobbler?
  - ruslan 7y ago
    If you mean the thing was not used for its intendent purpose, yes. But, who uses cell phone to make calls nowadays ? ;-)
rdtsc 7y ago
> the calculator combined not only the functions [+=] and [-=], but also the multiply-divide functions [X -:-]. Very interesting. It finally solved the mystery for me. My aunt was an accountant and she had one of those in her office. I remember looking at the keyboard and wondering how in the world you're supposed to divide and multiply with a single button. [-=] seems to be something like "invert the previous operation and then produce the result"
thedudeabides5 7y ago
To calculate (20 - 8 + 7) it was necessary to press the following keys [C] [2][0] [+ =] [8] [-=] [7] [+=]. Result: 5. To multiply the result, say by 3, the calculation could be continued by pressing the keys: [X] [3] [+=]. A [K] key was used for calculations with a constant. When you design a product with a a committee of 27 engineers.. A group of 27 engineers were assigned to this complex problem. It was a huge project which involved: producing the drawings, circuit and patterns consisting of 144 thousand points required to fit a microprocessor with 3400 elements within a 5x5 mm crystal.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mNovak 7y ago
  Don't old HP scientific calculators have a similar syntax? It's actually pretty logical; there's a running total, and you decide what to do with the number you just typed in, after typing it. Costs an extra button press to 'add' the first number to the total, I suppose.
  - 7thaccount 7y ago
    No, HP calculators were more efficient it would seem with their RPN. "20 ENTER 8 ENTER - 7 ENTER +" So you push 20 onto the stack and then 8 on the stack. Then you hit the minus key which returns 12 and puts that 12 on the stack, then you put 7 on the stack and click the plus key to give you 19.
    - morcheeba 7y ago
      You only need the first ENTER to separate the numbers; the rest were optional: "20 ENTER 8 - 7 +"
      - avmich 7y ago
        Not in general, I guess; 20 - 8 * 7 would be "20 ENTER 8 ENTER 7 * -". So if you need to do first operation which is not the leftmost, you'd have to add another "ENTER".
avmich 7y ago
Revers-engineering of B3-34 internals (in Russian): http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34 http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34 . Some more: https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/267234.html https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/267234.html .
AGivant 7y ago
It was a joke in Soviet Union that our Micro calculators are the biggest in the world!
- ruslan 7y ago
  Well, I admit that soviet calculators were of nearaly same size and same functionality as their western siblings. Some, were very interesting from engineering and use points.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
aswanson 7y ago
Max levchin stated he learned indirection in memory addressing because his mom was assigned to work calculator programming in the USSR before the family fled to the US in the early 90s. Amazing that a calculator had pointer features.
uniformlyrandom 7y ago
I learned to code on MK-52. It was fairly cheap and accessible by the time i have got my hands on it. After programming (and patching) in hex codes, any other programming language seems fairly simple. And on the back of MK-52 there was a potentiometer you could use to overclock it. I did not know the trick of re-soildering the BRP jumper though. Ah, good times.
- RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
  Any hyperlinks about that overlocking? I have an MK-52 and didn't know anything about that.

89 points by erikbye 7y ago

> In general, the first models of calculators had their own operational language, and the user had to learn the specific procedures related to each calculator. Let's take, for example, the C3-07, the first calculator of the Series "C" manufactured by the Leningrad factory "Svetlana." Forgive the focus on tangential information, but I'm curious, was this factory named after Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva? If so, it would seem a little strange that the factory would remain in the '70s with this name long after Khrushchev's secret speech and the subsequent de-Stalinization that took place to deconstruct the influence of Stalin's cult of personality. I can't seem to find any real info on the factory with a google search, but does strike me as curious.

erikbye 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_(company)
- FillardMillmore 7y ago
  D'oh! I must have used too many search terms in my query. Thanks for providing the link. Appears the company was founded in the late 1800s, so certainly not named after Stalin's daughter.
rdtsc 7y ago
A sibling post noticed it seems to be an abbreviation related to electrical lights, but it is worth mentioning that Svetlana is just a common name. Like say, Jenny or Stacy. A few my teachers had that name, for example. The shortened version, "Sveta" is also common. It would be different, for example, if it was an extremely rare name shared with Stalin's daughter.
- FillardMillmore 7y ago
  Yes, it would appear it is a common name in Russia. Though, in the late '70s (and perhaps even now), I believe Stalin's daughter was still the most famous person bearing the name. And me being ignorant of both this particular factory and its origins couldn't help but wonder (knowing the Soviet propensity for naming things in honor of the leaders - e.g. Stalingrad, Leningrad, etc.) if there happened to be any relation.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - pandaman 7y ago
    I can see how you could get confused. "Svetlana" is a strange name since it hasn't been used to name real people until early 20th century. The most famous Svetlana had always been the character from the eponimous poem. The name had been used to name things, places and literally characters but not real people since it has not been recognized by the Church. So, in a sense, it is the Stalin's daughter who is named after the factory.
  - anticodon 7y ago
    In Soviet Union places were named in honor of the people that did something good for the country. Stalin's daughter didn't do anything significant in her life - why would anyone name anything in honor of her????? People in the West has so perverse understanding of Russian/Soviet realities due to exorbitant amount of anti-Russian and especially anti-Soviet propaganda. I wonder if there was even a single positive thing ever published on the West about USSR. And people laugh at me when I say I don't believe any news (they believe they're becoming enlightened by reading or watching fake news which is any news source).
    - FillardMillmore 7y ago
      I see the ignorance of my question now - essentially the question was borne out of a lack of knowledge about how common the name 'Svetlana' is. The only 'Svetlana' I knew about was Stalin's daughter. My brain made a connection where one didn't exist. You are most certainly correct about the lack of understanding in the West about Russian/Soviet realities. Do you have any books you'd recommend to aid in an understanding of this? I recently picked up 'Everyday Stalinism' by Sheila Fitzpatrick - focusing on the lives of the average person during Stalin's time in power but it certainly casts a more negative light on this time than positive. With that said, I'd be more than interested in reading accounts that cast a more positive light on things. I've also read 'Khrushchev Lied' by Grover Furr - this book focuses more on half-truths and omissions of truth made in Khrushchev's secret speech about Stalin. Reading about Grover's history, it would seem he is not entirely unbiased but there were details in there that gave pause for thought. As for whether there was anything positive published in the West about the USSR, have you heard about Walter Duranty's writing for the New York Times and the subsequent Pulitzer Prize? That is, of course, a somewhat facetious example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty There were certainly positive things written about the USSR during the war (as they became allies with Western forces), with Stalin being affectionately called 'Uncle Joe' - things of course got less positive during the Cold War and the Red Scare. Are there no news sources you trust? Aren't there news reports that cite primary evidence that you would deem as trustworthy? And if you don't get your current info from news sources, where do you get it from?

ruslan 7y ago

I loved my MK 85 a lot! When I was at school in late 80s I used to store complex physics and trigonometrics formulas in it as a BASIC program text. Those days using calculators was allowed on exams so this little electronic cheat-sheet saved my sole many times :-).

savoytruffle 7y ago
A computational cobbler?
- ruslan 7y ago
  If you mean the thing was not used for its intendent purpose, yes. But, who uses cell phone to make calls nowadays ? ;-)

rdtsc 7y ago

> the calculator combined not only the functions [+=] and [-=], but also the multiply-divide functions [X -:-]. Very interesting. It finally solved the mystery for me. My aunt was an accountant and she had one of those in her office. I remember looking at the keyboard and wondering how in the world you're supposed to divide and multiply with a single button. [-=] seems to be something like "invert the previous operation and then produce the result"

thedudeabides5 7y ago

To calculate (20 - 8 + 7) it was necessary to press the following keys [C] [2][0] [+ =] [8] [-=] [7] [+=]. Result: 5. To multiply the result, say by 3, the calculation could be continued by pressing the keys: [X] [3] [+=]. A [K] key was used for calculations with a constant. When you design a product with a a committee of 27 engineers.. A group of 27 engineers were assigned to this complex problem. It was a huge project which involved: producing the drawings, circuit and patterns consisting of 144 thousand points required to fit a microprocessor with 3400 elements within a 5x5 mm crystal.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mNovak 7y ago
Don't old HP scientific calculators have a similar syntax? It's actually pretty logical; there's a running total, and you decide what to do with the number you just typed in, after typing it. Costs an extra button press to 'add' the first number to the total, I suppose.
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  No, HP calculators were more efficient it would seem with their RPN. "20 ENTER 8 ENTER - 7 ENTER +" So you push 20 onto the stack and then 8 on the stack. Then you hit the minus key which returns 12 and puts that 12 on the stack, then you put 7 on the stack and click the plus key to give you 19.
  - morcheeba 7y ago
    You only need the first ENTER to separate the numbers; the rest were optional: "20 ENTER 8 - 7 +"
    - avmich 7y ago
      Not in general, I guess; 20 - 8 * 7 would be "20 ENTER 8 ENTER 7 * -". So if you need to do first operation which is not the leftmost, you'd have to add another "ENTER".

avmich 7y ago

Revers-engineering of B3-34 internals (in Russian): http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34 http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34 . Some more: https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/267234.html https://ramlamyammambam.livejournal.com/267234.html .

AGivant 7y ago

It was a joke in Soviet Union that our Micro calculators are the biggest in the world!

ruslan 7y ago
Well, I admit that soviet calculators were of nearaly same size and same functionality as their western siblings. Some, were very interesting from engineering and use points.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

aswanson 7y ago

Max levchin stated he learned indirection in memory addressing because his mom was assigned to work calculator programming in the USSR before the family fled to the US in the early 90s. Amazing that a calculator had pointer features.

uniformlyrandom 7y ago

I learned to code on MK-52. It was fairly cheap and accessible by the time i have got my hands on it. After programming (and patching) in hex codes, any other programming language seems fairly simple. And on the back of MK-52 there was a potentiometer you could use to overclock it. I did not know the trick of re-soildering the BRP jumper though. Ah, good times.

RandomGuyDTB 7y ago
Any hyperlinks about that overlocking? I have an MK-52 and didn't know anything about that.