Ural () is a series of

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

computers built in the former

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

History

The Ural was developed at the Electronic Computer Producing Manufacturer of

Penza Penza (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura (river), Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Russian census, 2010 Census, Penza had ...

in the Soviet Union and was produced between 1956 and 1964. The computer was widely used in the 1960s, mainly in the socialist countries, though some were also exported to

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

and

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

. The Indian Statistical Institute purchased an Ural-1 in 1958. When the University of Tartu received a new computer in 1965, its old Ural 1 was moved to a science-based secondary school, the

Nõo Nõo () is a Populated places in Estonia, small borough () in Tartu County, in southern Estonia. It's located about 15 km southwest of the city of Tartu by the Tartu–Valga, Estonia, Valga–Riga railway and the European route E264 (also kn ...

Reaalgümnaasium, making the latter one of the first Soviet secondary schools to receive a computer. The name of the computer was also used to coin the first name for "computer" in Estonian, ''raal'', in use until the 1990s until it was replaced by the word ''arvuti'' ("computer"). School 444 in Moscow, Russia started graduating programmers in 1960 and had the Ural computer operating by its students on-premises in 1965.

Attributes

Models Ural-1 to Ural-4 were based on

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, thermionic valve (British usage), or tube (North America) is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. It ...

s (valves), with the hardware being able to perform 12,000 floating-point calculations per second. One

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

consisted of 40 bits and was able to contain either one numeric value or two instructions. Ferrite core was used as operative memory beginning with the Ural-2. A new series (Ural-11, Ural-14, produced between 1965 and 1971) was based on

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

s. It was able to perform mathematical tasks at computer centres, industrial facilities and research facilities. The device occupied approximately 90-100 square metres of space. The computer ran on

three-phase electric power Three-phase electric power (abbreviated 3ϕ) is a common type of alternating current (AC) used in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. It is a type of polyphase system employing three wires (or four including an optional n ...

and had a three-phase magnetic voltage stabiliser with 30kVA capacity. The main units of the system were: keyboard, controlling-reading unit, input punched tape, output punched tape, printer, magnetic tape memory, ferrite memory, ALU (arithmetical logical unit), CPU (central processing unit), and

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, electric current, current, and frequency to power ...

Models

Several models were released: * Ural-1 – 1956 * Ural-2 – 1959 * Ural-3 – 1964 * Ural-4 – 1962 * Ural-11 – 1965 * Ural-14 – 1965 * Ural-16 – 1969

Trivia

Charles Simonyi Charles Simonyi (; , ; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian Americans, Hungarian-American software architect. He introduced the graphical user interface to Bill Gates for the first time who later described it as the first of two revolutiona ...

, who was the second Hungarian in space, stated that he would take old paper tapes from his Soviet-built Ural-2 computer into space with him: he kept them to remind him of his past.http://go.sosd.com/servlet/nrp?cmd=sty&cid=RIM&pgn=1&ino=1061860&cat=Science&lno=1

References

External links