A computer programming classroom in the Soviet Union; a poster on the wall reads ‘Train BASIC Everyday!’; ca. 1985

Top line says: “Programming – the second grammar. The first grants knowledge. The second enables realization of knowledge in earnest”

The Soviets had a very diverse and powerful set of computational hardware and languages, and having developed in relative isolation from the rest of the world (*They had to wait for it to be released, reverse engineer it, and then attempt to reproduce it), they’ve built some pretty unique stuff.

There are websites out there dedicated to documenting this fascinating subject.

• History of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countries
• Computing in the Soviet Space Program
• Russian virtual computer museum

September 13, 2014 | Categories: Cold War Era U.S.-Soviet Relations, History of Science and Technology, Human History, Life under siege, Photography, Russian Empire, Weird | Tags: Computer, Computer technology, Computers, Interesting, Russia, Russian, Soviet bloc, Soviet Union, USSR, Weird | Leave a comment