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I'm a vintage calculator collector (one of maybe 30 left in the world) and I think it's interesting that the USSR tried to do this in the 70s with calculators.
by owenversteeg 12y ago
I'm a vintage calculator collector (one of maybe 30 left in the world) and I think it's interesting that the USSR tried to do this in the 70s with calculators. It didn't work well.
As a result of the effort, thousands of American calculators were disassembled and reassembled with Soviet cases and logos but American parts inside, so that Soviet bureaucrats thought they were using calculators made in the USSR. In reality, only a few calculators were made entirely in the USSR, and they were below the quality of American/Japanese/English calculators.
- diminish 12y agowhen i was talking with a lot of ex-soviet raised people, one thing they mention as a failure for the warsaw pact was the inability to develop a competitive electronic and computer industry.
- hangonhn 12y agoSure but this isn't the USSR anymore. I don't know to what degree the relevant things are different. For one, Russia is nominally capitalist -- their properties are a bit iffy at best though. Compared to the USSR, Russia is considerably more open and free. And that might be just enough for good ideas to flourish and good R&D to happen. Intellectual freedom and capitalism are more of a gradient than categorical. China is another example of this. They have been successful in some of their R&D efforts despite not being a Western liberal democracy. China has in fact produced their own chips, even if they aren't as good as what Intel and AMD are capable of.
- kjs3 12y agoThe Chinese Loongson processors are MIPS64 architecture and fabricated by STmicro (French company). So one could debate how home grown they are.