| ID | 8 |
| Title | Electronic Brains (3): Then we Took the Roof off |
| Broadcast | 2001-11-13 00:00:00 |
| Network | Radio 4 |
| Presenter | Mark Whitaker |
| Producer | Mike Hally |
| Precis | "I am enjoying this series so much" (Peter Barnard, RT). The Ukrainian city of Kyiv (Kiev) was over-run by the Nazis in World War 2, liberated by the Soviet Army a couple off years later, and by 1945 was in a terrible state. But while re-building started a small group of scientists and engineers found an abandoned monastery in an idyllic setting on the outskirts of the city, in a place called Feofania. There they built “secret laboratory number 1” and started work on the Soviet Union’s first electronic computer. |
| Duration | 15 |
| Txtime | 1899-12-30 09:30:00 |
| Repeat | 2002-10-08 00:00:00 |
| Rpttime | 1899-12-30 15:45:00 |
| Description | The Ukrainian city of Kyiv (Kiev) was over-run by the Nazis in World War 2, liberated by the Soviet Army a couple off years later, and by 1945 was in a terrible state. But while re-building started a small group of scientists and engineers found an abandoned monastery in an idyllic setting on the outskirts of the city, in a place called Feofania. There they built “secret laboratory number 1” and started work on the Soviet Union’s first electronic computer. This was no copycat – few details of western projects were in the public domain. Instead under the inspirational leadership of Sergei Lebedev they built a computer that generated so much heat they knocked walls down and took the roof off to try and keep it cool. You couldn’t just buy a printer in those days, so they cannibalised cash registers and turned them into printers. It ran a sample program for the anniversary of the Revolution in 1950 and on Xmas Eve 1951 it started full-time operations. On location in Kyiv and Feofania, the surviving members of the original team and the leading historian of Soviet computers tell this remarkable story. And they talk about their despair at a political decision in 1967 to copy IBM computers instead of keep faith with their own designs. |
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