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Ukrainian Computers
Viktor M. Glushkov, the founder of the Institute of Cybernetics in Kiev (in 1957)
and its director until his death, contributed enormously to the Russian computer
science and was the chief ideolog of all computers that were designed in the in-
stitute.
Kiev was the first computer designed and built in Kiev in 1956. It was the first
European computer with a high-level assembly programming language (point-
er-based language), as well as the first system for digital image processing and
Viktor M . Glushkov modeling primitive intellectual processes. It has two peripheral devices that allow
(1923–1982)
the computer to simulate the simplest learning algorithms of pattern recognition
and goal-directed behavior: a scanner and image display.
The vacuum tube computer Kiev from Kiev in 1956
Dnepr, designed in 1961, was a multi-purpose transistor-based control comput-
er for continuous monitoring and control of technological processes and complex
physical experiments.
The series Mir (Mir-1, -2,-3) were mini-computers for calculations in engineering,
research, and businesses. It may be considered as a prototype of the personal com-
puter, though it was not a desktop, it was a desk with the computer inside.
The computer Mir-1
for engineers
Unusual Computers
Ternary computer
Beginning in the 1950s, Soviet scientists Sergei L. Sobolev and Nikolay
P. Brusentsov conducted research on ternary computers that operated
on a base three numbering system of -1, 0, and 1 (ternary arithmetic)
rather than the conventional binary system upon which most comput-
ers are based. They designed the Setun, a functional ternary computer,
at Moscow State University. With a minimal instruction set (only 24
single-address instructions), Setun provided the fixed and floating-point
arithmetics, an optimized computation of polynomials , the operation
of bitwise multiplication, and three conditional transfer instructions. A Setun-70The ternary computer
simple and efficient architecture allowed a small group of programmers to Setun-70
equip the computer with advanced system programs and a rich set of appli-
cations. The computer was put into a limited production, but was supplanted by the more common binary archi-
tecture. In 1970 Brusentsov built an enhanced version of the computer, Setun-70.
With the advent of mass-produced binary components for computers, ternary computers have diminished to
a small footnote in the history of computing. However, ternary logic’s elegance and efficiency is predicted by
Donald Knuth to bring them back into development in the future. Possible ways on how this can happen is by the
combination of an optical computer with the ternary logic system.
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