Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
It began with the creation by the Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev
– a remarkable scientist, then still very young, I believe 45 years old
- of a computer, named Small Electronic Calculating Machine – MESM.
Well, it is easy to say, but it took Sergey Alekseevich three years to make - in fact, longer because even prior to the war[a] he had begun to think and nurture the idea of making a machine to quickly perform calculation - especially if there are many calculations.
Before coming to Kyiv, he (Lebedev) was an electrical engineer - a role in which he had to do a lot of calculations. An arithmometer was the only tool that could help.
At that point he had already created something, I mean an analog and rather primitive machine. Yet, he was already thinking of ways to turn the arithmometer into a machine of greater performance. Not a mechanical machine, of course. Because he was an electrical engineer, he wanted to try and automate the process of solving problems using electronic devices.
So when he started at the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, that was the concept he began to work on. He used the same principles of an arithmometer to build MESM.
MESM became the first digital computing program-controlled machine in continental Europe. Or, to be more precise, with a dynamically programmed control. Ongoing operations in MESM differed in that they used a binary number system. There are no numbers in this system except zero and one. Every number is represented with a unique set of ones and zeros.
The machine was created independently of other activities.
There was a cathedral nearby (where other experiments were done) but that was in no way related to MESM. But approximately 200 steps[b] away was a former dormitory for monks, a 2-storey building, it was half destroyed at the time, because the (WWII) frontline was here.
For the last couple of years (before the war)[c] it had served as a department of Pavlov’s Psychiatric Hospital. Yet, because Lebedev needed space, someone advised him to move to this building. So, they repaired the building.
But, let me tell you about the area (Feofania). The place had been a monastery, it was a paradise, an earthly paradise. The monks chose this place knowingly.
They even made a water supply there. Next to the building there were some small settlements with wonderful springs that were used for water supply. According to the legend, the water did not go at first, but the monks prayed hard, and the water started to run and the water supply started to operate. It was an excellent place.
The entire laboratory – it was not big - had basements occupied by workshops. There were no conveniences; everything you needed, including trash bins, was near the forest. There was also a sports section, a volleyball court.
The MESM was placed and mounted in the largest area on the ground floor. This was, after all, a huge machine, it occupied two rooms.
It consisted of six thousand incandescent bulbs, half a thousand transistors and two and a half thousand diodes, these were bulbs of this size – come, see it here.
Each zero and each one was stored in memory by two bulbs plus a lot of resistors, a lot of equipment.
The filament circuit meant each bulb heated up as it was used[d]. The bulbs got so hot, that even the building became warm, and Lebedev understood – something needed to be changed.
A solution was found. They removed the ceilings in this two-floor building to let the warm air out! Also, they installed fans. This is how MESM started to work.
We know that incandescent bulbs can withstand high temperatures. But just think about it. Take a TV set for example. Old TVs contained 6-10 bulbs, and still produced a lot of heat. Here, there were 6 thousand!
Sergey Alekseevich was, of course, in charge of all the work. He was so integral to creating the design of the machine that it would have been difficult to find someone better qualified, especially among his small laboratory team who were very young, only a few recent graduates. He was a teacher and a leader.
Who worked with him? Young people receiving an opportunity to learn - in some cases still studying to graduate from high school or going to an Institute. Many were 18-20 years old and had endured a hell of a lot of trouble during (Kyiv’s WWII) occupation. Some were school dropouts and so on, but they had a great desire to work, especially in such a creative and exciting field. So much so that when the computing machinery required, they worked around the clock. It was so interesting, when the machine was being debugged, the work was in shifts - the staff were prepared to do that.
The main laboratory team consisted of 12 people – engineers, technicians and a similar number of workshop staff who soldered and carved. It was a very small group. What they achieved was a real feat, placing 6000 bulbs in separate blocks.
They worked flawlessly together. It was a fine union of leaders and excellent [e]workers. Moreover, the leaders were capable of doing more than just organizing - Lebedev himself worked with a soldering iron. All the technicians referred to him about the most detailed and subtle things and, believe me, he understood.
Now, it’s important to understand the atmosphere of the time. Back then, young people were eager to learn, not focused on making money. Those who were older joined scientific-research organizations. Very soon, a number of important institutions relating to military research were based in Ukraine. But it was not just defence industries – in Severodonetsk, for example, a magnificent set of institutions and factories was opened. It provided computing equipment practically for the entire Soviet Union. I will not go into numbers here, but they produced a lot. Very young workers worked there as well.
It was such a moral environment, a time when people had confidence that things will only get better, it was inspiring even though there was a lot of hardship. I remember, one of the technicians told me when he first came to work he had nowhere to stay so he lived at a railway station! Later on, apartments were built at the laboratory for the workers.
Despite his brilliance, Sergey Alekseevich Lebedev was very approachable. After he stopped working in Kyiv he became director of the Institute in Moscow. I was a postgraduate student then. I was visiting the institute, which performed secret work, and as I remember, opened the door to Levedev’s office without knocking. Well, I asked permission to enter, said hello, and he immediately began to ask questions about what was new in my life. So, I started telling him (about my personal research details) and he was very interested.
Feofania (where MESM was) had wonderful ponds, mushrooms in the forest for collecting, volleyball. Well, the fact that he played volleyball – it’s great. As a rule, (Lebedev) was very disciplined and ensured his team took their lunch breaks. During breaks, the whole group of people, headed by Lebedev, escaped to the ponds, swimming. They played Ping-Pong in the hallways as well.
Olesya Grigoryevna, Lebedev’s wife, sought ways to divert Sergei Alekseevich from work, because he worked very hard. So Shtepsel and Tarapunka (comics), a wonderful pianist Sviatoslav Richter – they were frequent visitors (to Lebedev’s family flat). I no longer remember all the detail of one New Years, but Olesya Grigoryevna had invited many guests. Everyone had arrived before Richter so she convinced them all to hide under the table to surprise him! [f]
But, while Sergey Alekseevich participated in the socialising, he always kept a drawing board nearby on which he could made notes. So he could keep working while still joining in on the conversation. This is true.
Nechaev, a professor [g]who lived on the floor below, told me “Last night I heard a rumble from above. And when I left the apartment in the morning, I saw Olesya Grigoryevna. So I asked her, what happened. And she replied: “We work till we drop!”
Sergey Alekseevich had climbed on his chair to write high on his drawing board and fell!”
It (MESM) was built during 1948, 1949, 1950. In 1950 the prototype was ready, and in 1951 it was inspected by the State Commission. The Commission checked the machine for three days, from the 23rd to the 25th of December.
None of the developers of the machine except for Lebedev were present when the machine was being checked. Academician Keldysh was there as the head of the Commission. Also present were the most significant mathematicians from the University, from the institute named after Steklov – the strongest mathematics institute of that time, and then there were a few deputy minister level people from different ministries present, as well as some competitors.
The fact is, and this is an interesting story, Lebedev had difficulties with the completion of his machine because he needed a lot of equipment. Our then-president Alexander Vladimirovich Palladin, got tired of Lebedev’s complaints about shortages. So, he called Lebedev and said that although the machine was great and much needed, he needed to move it to Moscow. But, the machine had only just finished debugging.
There is a letter preserved, signed by Lebedev, where it says “My dear Alexander, the state of machine debugging is such that it is almost ready, but if it is transported to Moscow, debugging, which lasted a year and a half or two years will have to be repeated. This will cause so much delay to the so great, much needed machine that I cannot accept your offer.” The case was over.
The most important problems of the time were solved (on MESM). Since 1951, MESM worked for another full seven years. It even solved problems related to calculations for the hydrogen bomb.
When the machine was finished, he (Lebedev) co-wrote with two key partners a book called “Small Electronic Calculating Machine.” This was the most wonderful tutorial. At first it was kept secret, but it was later declassified. The book was published in 1951 and by 1952 the book had even reached an American organization called the CIA!
(Thanks to MESM) many problems were solved and personnel trained, and the laboratory – later the Institute of Cybernetics was created on the back of the computational center. In this institute Lebedev’s initiative was supported by Glushkov, and Paton said that now we have a great institution known all over the world.
There are wonderful words of Boris Evgeniyevich Paton: “We will always be proud that in Kyiv, in our Academy, the first computer in continental Europe was created.” It’s clear that Boris Evgeniyevich believes that Sergey Alekseevich was certainly a man of genius.
Also, to quote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “To be able to give direction – is a sign of genius.” What did Lebedev do? Out of nothing, he gave direction to computer science, the new field of informatics.