The project to build the M-1 or Automatic Digital Computer (ADC) M-1 () was completed at the end of 1951, at the Energetics Institute of the
USSR Academy of Sciences
The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...
.
Overview
In charge of the Laboratory of Electrosystems was
Isaak Semenovich Brook (or Bruk), who obtained the first domestic patent with the title "Digital Computer with Common Bus" in 1948.
Work to build the computer based on Brook's design began in 1950. Parts were very difficult to get due to
postwar rationing. On the other hand, due to availability of
copper oxide Copper oxide is any of several binary compounds composed of the elements copper and oxygen. Two oxides are well known, Cu2O and CuO, corresponding to the minerals cuprite and tenorite, respectively. Paramelaconite () is less well characterized. ...
diodes which were brought as trophies from
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, the machine had the lowest lamp count of contemporary designs, at 730. The memory was based on an original invention of an electrostatic memory using the ordinary
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (formerly known as an oscillograph, informally scope or O-scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying voltages of one or more signals as a function of time. Their main purpose is capturing i ...
cathode-ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a ...
. Each tube was capable of holding 32 words, 25 bit each. The computer had 8 such tubes for a total fast memory of 256 machine words.
The computer turned out to work rather reliably and was immediately put to practical use, for numerical calculations in
nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter.
Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies th ...
. For a period of about a year this was the first and the only working digital computer in
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, and one of the first in the world.
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{List of Soviet computer systems
Early computers
Soviet computer systems