3 ms·

A really fascinating detail from the article: apparently, the Soviet Union had a CDC installation as well... > In Leningrad, APL users grouped around the Scien

A really fascinating detail from the article: apparently, the Soviet Union had a CDC installation as well... > In Leningrad, APL users grouped around the Scientific Research Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in which a Cyber 172 computer was installed. This group used APL for the purposes of economic planning It looks like CDC was the beneficiary of a Nixon-era thaw and commercial exchange with the Soviet Union. I wonder who else benefitted from this era. https://philipps-welt.info/CDC_History/CDC%20history%20soviet%20union.PDF https://philipps-welt.info/CDC_History/CDC%20history%20sovie...

rramadass 2y ago
I believe CDC Cyber series of mainframes were installed in many countries. I knew of at least two, one in the institute that i studied in and another at a bank, both in Calcutta (aka Kolkata), India in late-80's/early-90's. My first job was implementing a Personnel Information System using Cobol85 on a Cyber 180/840A in the above-mentioned institute. Its OS was named NOS/VE and it had its own system programming language named Cybil. There were racks of manuals which unfortunately i didn't understand much of since i was a noob fresh out of school. A lot of hardware and OS research/advances were first done in the mainframe world before being scaled down and adapted to smaller computers. I wish there were some special courses teaching how hardware/OS/Languages evolved from the beginning so that we can see concretely how a single idea started from simple origins and ended up as the highly complex implementations we have today. History gives you insight which you can never get by reading just the facts today.
pinewurst 2y ago
The 172 was the slowest of the Cybers (about as fast as 6400) and dates from right around the time when COCOM was formed to systemize computer performance export restrictions to the USSR.

rramadass 2y ago

I believe CDC Cyber series of mainframes were installed in many countries. I knew of at least two, one in the institute that i studied in and another at a bank, both in Calcutta (aka Kolkata), India in late-80's/early-90's. My first job was implementing a Personnel Information System using Cobol85 on a Cyber 180/840A in the above-mentioned institute. Its OS was named NOS/VE and it had its own system programming language named Cybil. There were racks of manuals which unfortunately i didn't understand much of since i was a noob fresh out of school. A lot of hardware and OS research/advances were first done in the mainframe world before being scaled down and adapted to smaller computers. I wish there were some special courses teaching how hardware/OS/Languages evolved from the beginning so that we can see concretely how a single idea started from simple origins and ended up as the highly complex implementations we have today. History gives you insight which you can never get by reading just the facts today.

pinewurst 2y ago

The 172 was the slowest of the Cybers (about as fast as 6400) and dates from right around the time when COCOM was formed to systemize computer performance export restrictions to the USSR.