From Storm to the Moon. Part 1. The first computer

Here is a somewhat unusual article. Actually, this is not an article at all. A year ago, just after Cosmonautics Day 2017, I interviewed Alexander Konstantinovich Platonov , a mathematician at the Institute of Applied Mathematics.

A person who took part in the development of our computers and cosmonautics. He was one of those who still remembered how to program on MESM, BESM and Strelakh, who counted on them the program for launching the Storm, and then the Satellite, and much more. He remembered well the creators of all our technology, from Lebedev to Korolev and Keldysh. He was 86 years old, but he struck me with the clarity of his thought.

In fact, it was not an interview, it is a memory of the path traveled. I specifically asked for this format of the conversation, and recorded it on a dictaphone. And there is a problem: the conversational thought is far enough from the literary one, there are frequent jumps of thought, transitions from one question to another.

Recognizing the text and processing it turned out to be difficult. The uncertainties that arose during the time of clarification are no longer possible - unfortunately, Alexander Konstantinovich died last year.

Moreover, his memories are of undoubted historical interest. The processing of memories connected with the development of computer technology was especially difficult for me. If in astronautics I can make a noticeable revision, then in the history of computers it is much more difficult to do this.
I want to emphasize that these are just memories, a conversation in which it was not possible to test your knowledge with external sources. Memory is a strange thing. Bright moments are imprinted in it, and the general chronology is forgotten over time. So I apologize in advance for some ambiguities, some things remain incomprehensible to me.

Now it’s no longer to clarify, but also not to publish - not an exit, the information is interesting and quite valuable. I tried to preserve the author's speech as much as possible, for that I left mathematical slang. I hope there will be no problems with this.

A few comments. We discussed, among other things, this site. The article that is mentioned there - here it is .

I have broken his memories into three parts. Before you - the first, it is mainly devoted to the creation of Soviet computing technology. The second part is devoted to work in the space program, the third is devoted to the MCC. But they will be noticeable later. Turn to the interview.

- Tell us a little about yourself.

- My father graduated from Kharkov Medical, tried, by the way ... I had to be born on Franz Josef Land, and my mother agreed to go there, although I was already in position. After all, the doctor must be in the winter!

But as a result, they decided that the radio operator was more important than the doctor, and instead of his father, Krenkel drove. My father became a local doctor in Transbaikalia, an area of ​​100 per 100 km, the Nerchinsky plant. This is on the border with China, on the Argun River, 300 km from the railway - that's where I was born, and my father took me as a doctor. There he began to study Beck's disease - a mysterious, little-studied disease. Then he worked in Gorky, Chelyabinsk. So I grew up in factories, and I, a boy of four or five, was interested.

When his father worked at the Chelyabinsk plant, he received a letter that a place was made at the Institute of Brain in St. Petersburg. He quit and rushed. And then they bring home a subpoena — into the army. Mom sent a telegram to the train, and in Moscow, barely getting off the train, my father went to the military registration and enlistment office. They said to him: “Drive back”, and he replied: “I want to volunteer!”. My father understood that there was no need to go back. So he became an aviation doctor. During the war he was the head of the 18th Army, which passed from Yelets to Berlin. In general, my father had a lot in life. His most famous achievement is the book "Entertaining Psychology." She is very much loved, republished in various publishing houses.

I speak about my father in order to make it clear: as a teenager, I spent a lot of time at the airfield, among the broken planes. My friend's father was the head of PFP (field repair shops). At that time, my father was at the front, I was 14 - 15 years old, the flight school ... well, the craving for technology then probably appeared. Besides, the father was far away at that time, he fought, and he couldn’t engender interest in psychology in me. And my mother was next to me, and taught physics at school. In the seventh grade I already read Perelman .

-What exactly?

- "Interplanetary travel." Before that, I wanted to be a tanker, then a polar explorer, then a sailor, and even went to the draft board - I wanted to be a motorman in a naval school. I wanted to work in the hold, because of stupidity (laughs). But they didn't take me, because my birthday is January 3, 1931, and then they took the boys of the thirtieth year of birth. These three days - they saved me. Later, when they studied at the institute, everyone wanted to get into NII-4, and they also did not make it through foolishness, but now I am happy that we did not end up there. In general, in the seventh grade I was fascinated by interplanetary travel, and worked in a circle at the planetarium, Siegel himself nurtured us.

- Where was it?

- In the Moscow Planetarium. The fact is that my father had a curious biography. In 1937, he was to be arrested. At that time, he was actively doing simulators and punching the idea of ​​using them in training. From the Moscow Institute of Innovative Medicine, he was seconded to Kacha. And either by accident, or specifically the chief called him back. Immediately, literally in two days, we left there, and this saved the father from arrest, because there were all enemies of the people around. Cleaned how much in vain.

As a result, my father returned to Moscow, somewhere in the basement they gave us an apartment, and we became Muscovites. Here I was finishing school, and I already knew where I wanted to go. Went to choose an institute. In the MAI, the exams were earlier than at MSU, and I decided - I would try to enroll in MAI, it would not work - then I would go to MSU. And you know what I tell you? My advice: teach children what they don’t want to learn. Because if they themselves want to, then they themselves will learn, they will get it, I know it from myself. I compare myself with Okhotsimsky - and we were very close to Dmitry Yevgenyevich - and I conclude: how fortunate that I did not go to MSU! With my analytical mind, I would be interested in number theory or something else. And in MAI I was taught to work with a hammer, a file, to drill - in a word, to work not only with my head, but also with my hands. Okhotsimsky would have gone to the MAI — an ordinary engineer would have left him. Because Dmitry Evgenievich is a technician to the depths of his soul, who brilliantly taught mathematics. And this mathematician in technology understood the best, and was not afraid to take on technical tasks. He had a love for this, and at Moscow State University he was taught everything that was possible. He brilliantly knew all the mathematics, and the academician was not for nothing.

- You did not study at MSTU?

- No, MSTU did not consider. I considered mifi. Here is my school friend, Vitka Protasov , he went to the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, he is the creator of our solid-propellant rockets. Once he said: " Ustinov kissed me on the lips and gave the Lenin Prize." He got it because he managed to do something that no one could before. Now he is no longer alive.

Then the following happened to me: at the institute, Gerka Ivanov, the creator of the “D” bloc near Korolev, came to the institute and had made small side control cameras in Khimki, and later worked for many years as a representative of the Chief Designer at the Voronezh plant. Came up and told in confidence that there is a large group of people who are engaged in interplanetary flights. “Don't tell anyone about this!” He added.

- What year was it?

It was 1948th year. Then we were honored at the Komsomol meeting because we, as pioneers, are doing some kind of nonsense instead of doing serious work. When was the first anniversary after the death of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the same person who prevented us from practicing "nonsense", the dean of the aviation department, was sitting in the front row and was in full favor. People change, yes.

In our circle was the future associate of Tikhonravov , a certain Oleg Gurko . He organized all of us. Oleg is an original person. Do you know who his ancestor Gurko was in Tsarist time? This is a man who, by cunning, actually attached all of China to Russia before the Amur, deceived their mandarins. And he got into those parts, because in Britain during the exhibition he stole a bullet case, for which he was exiled. And during the war with the Bulgarians, this Gurko played a very large role. So Oleg is an aristocrat in his ancestors, and he himself was a real aristocrat.

Oleg studied in the second year, and we, freshmen, organized a circle of interplanetary flights, which we, after that memorable Komsomol meeting, had to rename into a circle of high-altitude flights. It was there that Ivanov, Knyazev, Rzhanov, Yezhov and Platonov gathered.

Knyazev, together with Rauschenbach , actually created a system for photographing the far side of the moon, the first orientation system. Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh loved him most of all. We were still studying peroxide with students, so he made a peroxide orientation system. Rzhanov - this is GOTS. He was studying the oscillations of fluid in the tanks; it was he who opened the Queen's eyes to why the “sevens” were falling. He found this beaten TNA, and then Korolev realized that they were to blame, and we must put a damper.

He ended his life in fact at the post of Resurrection , the test manager. Unfortunately, he died early.

All these guys deserve to be remembered.

In this student society, which was called SNO "Antos", we ourselves lectured. In fact, they finished the second institute there. So, I know chemistry, because in the second year we were interested in the chemistry of fuels, and we specifically, for a whole year, studied chemistry separately.
They read lectures to each other, gave reports on various topics. By the sixth course, we already had a section of high-altitude flights, and in four faculties! When the efforts of the outstanding scientist Sternfeld and the All-Union Section of Cosmonautics were organized, Merkuryev was there, and so was I. I learned a lot of interesting things there! Much of what is said here is taken from communication with these people. I brought Merkuryev to my father for a conversation, while he was very interested in the problems of weightlessness.

Anyway, we finished the institute, wanted to go to work at NII-4, but did not get into it, and scattered us across different institutions. They wanted to leave me in graduate school, but I refused.

In MAI, I entered the motor faculty, then studied there WFD, air engines. And only at the time when I was studying in the third year, the department of LRE, headed by Kvasnikov , was organized.

As it turned out, on our course there was another Platonov, Albert Vasilyevich. When I passed the oral entrance exam in mathematics, the teacher began to give me tasks. I see a sheet with tasks first upside down, but as soon as he turns the sheet to me, I immediately say the answer. So the first time, the second, the third ... I went to the regime, and there were at least twenty tasks there. The teacher says: "I do not understand anything, you answer so well, and you have a deuce in mathematics." I was surprised: “What kind of deuce? It can't be! ”He says:“ For arithmetic examples. ” "It can not be! - I say. “I decided both from left to right and from right to left - everything came together!” Let's go watch. It turned out that this very Albert Vasilievich Platonov wrote the work for the two, they confused us and attributed his two to me. Nevertheless, he also entered, and further I repeatedly suffered because of my namesake. For example, he took a loan, and then they looked for me to pay it off.

At the senior courses, the teachers were very fostering us. Ekaterina Ivanovna Berezovskaya was at the department, she persuaded Alexander Ivanovich Polyarny to become the leader of our circle. Although I knew and loved mathematics, I learned two things from him that I was not taught in MAI: I learned that there is a calculus of variations, and Polar also taught me numerical integration, the Euler method. He gave us the task to make a two-stage rocket. Well, about the way the Americans built their WAC Corporal after V-2 . Yezhov did the first step, I - the second. We counted all this thermochemistry. Instead of one calculation of the combustion chamber, we made more than a dozen! What is a thermochemistry course? These are the graphics and methods of Zeldovich-Polar, this was a book on the "blue" (a copy, a reproduction of a technical drawing, obtained with the help of contact printing on photosensitive paper). There are painted dissociation, recombination ... And it was necessary to shoot directly on these graphs. At first, everyone considered his point himself, and then it dawned on us that the two work out better. We ourselves came to this, and then in the PKO we were told that this was necessary. It turns out that this is the law: when you do something important, it is better to do it together at the same time, not to distribute the work, otherwise there will be mistakes from the very beginning.

We defended one diploma for two, and we were told that this was the first and last time. Actually, this was my first publication. By the way, this is optimal rocket control. It was necessary to calculate the combustion chambers in order to find the best engine for the rocket. Although usually what kind of engine there is - this is what they put. In short, it was a good school.

With a diploma because of the "second Platonov" there was another such incident. We are already called for protection - and the diploma is not yet intertwined, a person is on duty in the workshop, finally our diplomas are issued to us, we have signed them, we are running - and they are still wet, they smell like glue ... I open my diploma and see: the content is mine, on the first page is my namesake, Platonov AB, and the name of the diploma is his too!

However, the main thing in this story is that at this job I began to dream of making a computer that would itself do all the necessary calculations.

After graduation, Dimka Knyazev and I were taken to NII-1; now this is the Keldysh Research Center. First, to Georgy Petrov , to the third laboratory, to diffusers. At the same time Keldysh created the sixth laboratory, an analogue of the RAND Corporation - he wanted to have under his hands people who could quickly give answers to his questions. That's where I met them.

- What year was it? 1952th?

- No, it was 1954 ... May, April, June, July ... In August, my son was born, and I was at that time in the laboratory. We were engaged in " Storm ". Then suddenly it turned out that they had appointed a new head of the department in the laboratory, some of Okhotsymsky, and he would work on a big machine. As soon as I heard this, I went to the laboratory and began to ask. This is my fate and folded. I needed this car, and he needed to give his subordinates to the new boss, so Dimka Knyazev and I ended up at Okhotsimsky.

Then Dimka stayed with Rauschenbach, in the sixth laboratory. They wanted to make Boris Viktorovich the chief of staff in the laboratory, since Keldysh knew him well, but Rauschenbach refused, saying that administrative activity was “not his.” I wrote a lot about this man, of all the academicians he is a real academic! A great mathematician, he knew the Chinese language and Chinese culture very well, even painting, music. But it is much drier ...

- Keldysh?

- Keldysh, yes ... Amazing man, unique. Only very shy. And so ... He was always afraid of himself, and therefore seemed very alien to others.

- When you came, Yegorov was already there?

- About Egorov I have something to tell. In general, I came to that department because I wanted to do space flights. When I realized that turning the adding machine is inefficient, they brought me to the BESM. There I actually mastered it, and mastered it well. Firstly, I liked it very much, and secondly, I was very lucky several times, and that was the way things were.

I looked at how Lebedev worked at the console, and took from him such tricks of working with binary numbers, logical operations, which later became very famous. I was assigned to teach the people of Korolev to work at BESM, Grechko , Zhenya Tarasov, Favorsky . They quickly learned, I once explained, and then they themselves worked. So BESM is my first love, this is a car that I knew by heart, and was familiar with all its authors. Lebedev is also an amazing personality. Keldysh, Lavrentiev , Lebedev - these are very special people.

So I became a programmer to the bone marrow. My first job was the launch of the Storm. On this very mode, two accelerators. We worked simultaneously on “Bure” and on “Buran”. Okhotsymsky found how to introduce aerodynamics into the car. There were no splines then, and he came up with the idea that our semi-literate girls calmly did everything. The most important thing is to select the boundaries of the plots. Here it is very difficult to formalize. In fact, you need to lay the semantics of the curve in the knowledge ...

I would like to say a few words about the car. You mentioned SPM ...

- I was right in the assumption that she was too weak, and therefore they actually forgot about her?


- I'll tell you about her now. The history of computing deserves to understand it. It was not immediately clear when it became clear that it was not immediately mastered. It is interesting to compare how this business developed in our country and how it developed in America. I am probably the only survivor among those who worked at the first BESM.
So, Lebedev Sergey Alekseevich was an employee of Mikhail Lavrentiev. Lavrentiev worked in Feofania, this is a suburb of Kiev, you have to go there by train from the city. His institute, which made the unified energy system of the entire USSR, was located in a huge, almost four-story church.

With the consent of Lavrentiev, Lebedev began to design an electronic counting machine with the money allocated to the institute for the creation of the country's energy system. I don’t know the details, but the guys who made BESM with him later said that he invented everything himself, including the command system.

“But where could he get it from?”

- In America at that time was. Have done ENIAC already. Could something and leak. But I saw exactly how he programmed, how he entered everything, how he worked with these toggle switches on the console. These are binary numbers. I saw that in logic he was a master, and that he came up with a system of commands. Moreover, all subsequent systems of commands: Arrows, M-20 and further - all of them were worse than those Lebedev had invented. I worked on those and these, and I can say what is worse and why. Our Shura-Bura is to blame for this “deterioration”, I wanted to make the electronic engineers pleasant to make it easier for them. As a result, logic has doubled.

At BESM there were many conditions of all kinds: the difference, more / less, plus / minus, and so on. And on Strela and other machines - first develop a sign, and then the following commands from them. In addition, BESM had a team that was not available anywhere else. It is necessary for logic, especially in dynamics, in aviation. This is an amazing team, called IF. What is this team? Consider a three-address machine. Send the first address to the second address, transfer to the third address, and here the IF is to send with its own sign, if the sign of the second address is positive, and with the reverse, if the sign is negative.

This is not an assignment of a mark - and that is the whole point. The team of assigning the mark is unambiguous: it was a plus - they did a minus, there was a minus - they did a plus. Here you choose a sign using the second address. For example, when the steering wheel rests on the support, it is necessary to simulate the position of the steering wheel, on which it rests, on this or that. With the help of the IF command, this can be done easily; without it, several more commands must be entered. FC ± is a powerful addition to IFs, because it makes it possible to compare two characters and select the desired result in a single command.

Of course, I really liked BESM. We worked at the Institute of Fine Mechanics day and night, for 12 hours in a row. They did the “Storm”, considered its elimination, and there I got a good experience how to solve regional problems. The story was pretty shameful. Dimka Hermann and I from the NII-1 branch, the current Mars Marsh , I and I should have put the launch trajectory. But she did not agree with us in any way, this task.There, a lot of restrictions arose along the way, speed pressure and so on. And it is necessary to withdraw to 20 km and three Mach, taking into account aerodynamics. I wrote everything there, and then the task does not converge. As a result, during the week we slept in turns, and those who came were not allowed on the car - our task was the most important, and we could not solve it.

In the end I understood. Gradients were bad. Foolishly decided to choose two parameters: on time and off time. At the very beginning of the vertical start, then the only parameter varies in pitch. In fact, two parameters were obtained. There were so many other restrictions that they couldn’t be able to vary anything, they had to twist ...

- I remember that at “Storm” just the direction was set by the starting complex.

- Here! But I had two parameters: on time and off time. But it turned out that the conditions in height and speed with these two conditions are almost collinear. And so, when I finally thought of building what we got there, I saw that the gradients are almost parallel, that is, in fact, we were driving it “near the ravine”. Dmitry Yevgenyevich told me later: "Sasha, you must know this, whether you have a good determinant or a bad one." This was a good school. It turns out that everything is elementary: you need to take a determinant, because it is a volume spanned by vectors, and then take the rows of this matrix and simply multiply them! This I later learned when Ohotsymsky told me.

By the way, when we started to fly to the moon, we again entered the on time and off time. And suddenly the turn-off time began to appear before the turn-on time. Then I concluded: choose the parameters wisely!


After all, we did our job, sitting somewhere deep in the hold of the engine room of this large ship, only occasionally climbing its captain’s bridge. Much we did not know, and now opens. I realized this for the first time when I saw a previously secret film about the launch of “The Storm” along the trajectory, which I was alone with Dima Herman from Tolstousov at the BESM. I first saw what and how .. AK Platonov. Fragment of the correspondence

Let's return to the history of computing. Lebedev did the layout of the electronic computer, and ran out of money. Then he wrote a letter to Stalin that useful work was underway ... They sent a commission headed by Keldysh. Keldysh saw the computing technology and, one must pay tribute to his vision, understood the perspective. As a result, the government issued a resolution on this matter. The first point: rename the layout of the electronic counting machine to a small electronic counting machine. I came to BESM, and they say to me: here is BESM, and there - MESM, a small electronic counting machine. So, nothing of the kind: it was a mock-up, and it was renamed MESM by a government decree. The second point: to make a big electronic machine - BESM. They entrusted it to the director of the Institute of Fine Mechanics.


MESM

What is the Institute of Fine Mechanics? It is located in Moscow, on Leninsky Avenue, next to the Physical Institute. It was created in order to do everything related to punch cards. IBM made punch cards for the first census in Russia in the nineteenth century. That is, Russia paid good money to some small company called IBM, and from that began its development. We have all the statistics on tabs. And here they are "chukh-chukh-chukh" ...

What kind of equipment was there? Sorters, punch cards, printers, printed punch cards on special paper. Solid mechanics! The director of the institute making computer equipment, which was used at that time, did not cope with the task. And there was a whole story: as Lebedev was persuaded (Lavrentiev was persuaded), and Lavrentiev became the director of the institute, and then Lebedev became the director of the institute instead of the “unsuccessful” academician. And they made BESM. How did? Graduates and term papers from the physics departments of several institutes were collected, and the students made this machine. First, they made projects on their projects, then in the workshops they made iron. The process has begun, aroused interest, the Ministry of Radio Industry was involved.

The first was done not by the CMS, but the so-called digital integrator. And Keldysh and Okhotsimsky sent us to the KB to look at him. We were shown a whole box of what they piled there ... In short, we took the derivative of the second point, and used it for the first, that is, it was a first-order method, and with a bad residual member. Okhotsimsky understood all this and criticized. When I came to him, he immediately explained to me what Polarny once explained: the Euler method, with recalculation, and this is the second order.

Then they made the SPM. But before SPM, the factory that produced tabulators and other mechanics also made its electronic machine. And it was the first powerful machine in NII-1. When I came with BESM to this car, my eyes went to my forehead. People who did it, just sculpted from what they have. There was no idea, that is, on it I could hardly do anything! She knew how to multiply, add, divide, had a memory, really, and she had some kind of cunning code that you would not use. But it was also an attempt! Then the SCM appeared. The car was not bad, Keldysh gladly took it, because he needed it, he created an institute to introduce computer technology wherever possible. He realized even then, in Kiev, how much the right way was. Here he took her, and everyone was happy to work on it, and I, too.

- Was there a big car?

- Well, imagine a closet above the height of the photo (shows with a hand).

- It turns out, a meter and a half?

- Yes, the wardrobe is so wide, maybe a little bigger (shows with hands). And the length is up to me.

- It turns out, about three meters.

Such a wardrobe. There's a drum inside, and somewhere close by is a remote. The trouble was that because of the drum, everything was very long.

Give the command "if" (if), and must wait for eight teams until there is a track under the head. We were told by the developers: just find out what to do in these eight teams, but because of this, we did it eight times slower.

But Seva still managed to do everything, because absolutely the whole country worked at BESM. At the Institute of Mechanics there was the first section in the left tower - this was the territory of the PKO, given to Keldysh. We spent the night there. And went down, and rose, and worked. Atomic projects were going on at BESM, plus Korolev, plus Levin immediately began to translate from French, then they began to predict the weather. Therefore, Keldysh took SPM and we were transferred to it in order to free up time at BESM.


BESM

In connection with the BESM, I recall the episode. Like everyone kicked out of the car. She spent most of her time with Kurchatov, and told her not to give time to anyone until they had completed all the work. This is very angry Lebedev. Initially, he distributed the time himself, and did not agree with such a requirement, but Kurchatov knocked out this decree. Then I ran out of time at eight o'clock, I had to go home. This is where the girls of Kurchatov come in with punched tapes. But behind them enters angry Lebedev with the words: "This is wrong!".

In short, Sergei Alekseevich himself sat at the console, but I did not leave. And it was here that I looked at how he worked. There were 6 or 8 tasks, each, probably, an hour and a half, or even more. So he found a mistake in everyone and spent less than an hour on it. Here it is, I tell you, skill. Then he turned to me: “Can you count?” I replied: “Yes!” “Count!” Said Sergey Alekseevich and left. And I counted until the morning.

How did he do it? The punched tape was double track, there was a sync pulse, and here either zero or one. Hole - this is one, no hole - zero. Here is the width of the tape, and here is a reel. There is a punched tape on it, if you roll it up, then that's such a height (it shows with hands). Common error: an extra unit is broken or there is no sync hole. On this "hole" the whole program is shifted by one. He sits, looks at the remote, twists the tape, and jumps out the AVOS. He starts by the method of dividing the program in half to look for where the "bad" team comes out. Once shifted - it means, already "bad." Finds Good.It is not difficult. I used it too. But then you have to go to the end of the corridor, there is a ribbon there, you have to unwind it.

And where is this shift, how to find? What did Lebedev do? He knew how many teams needed to type in the address so that the spinning reel would stop at the right place. Which significantly accelerated the process.

- Did the CMS also have a punched tape program? Or was it set on the remote?

- What did we enter into the SPF? In my opinion, punched tape, I do not remember ... Tape, most likely. It could only be she ... For the first time, I saw the five-track tape already on TC, the international telegraph code.

- How did you get the results?

The printout was on the side. Here was a wardrobe, and there was a printout. How she screamed! On Strela she gave punch cards, she had to go to another hall, and there, on this tabulator, type. Here it was very uncomfortable. However, the SPM in my memory is a kind of freak -

Slow? Is these drums eight times slower?

-Of course. RAM on a magnetic drum. There the story was not easy. BESM was supposed to give 10,000 operations per second. But it is designed for memory on electrostatic tubes. There was a fight. IEP, which did the tube, he said that we can only do a certain amount. To give? And at the very top they decided: BESM or Strela? It was necessary to lay in advance in the state plan, long before the creation of the car.

BESM was designed for this memory and the speed of 10,000 operations per second, while the Americans had at that time either five or eight, and the BESM would be the first in the world in speed. But there were no tubes.

Then Lebedev and the guys made a memory on the mercury tubes. This is such a lamp, there are mercury vapor in it, the speed of sound is small, and there are 16 numbers in each handset with 64 numbers. Alas, I began to forget a lot.

Actually, even the first display in the world was made on BESM, Sokolov, a wonderful guy. He recorded such commands to the drum so that the muzzle appeared, smiled and much more. But, due to the replacement, the BESM on the tubes gave only 1000 operations per second. Moreover, all calculations on them were carried out 2 times, it is necessary, because these mercury tubes often went astray.

When I later switched to electrostatic memory, it was before my eyes. The car was stopped literally for half a month or maybe a little bit more. As a result, they made a parallel from the serial machine. The whole team of young guys — after all, Melnikov and others were still boys — rolling up their sleeves and remaking everything. They made their 10 thousand operations per second, then they raised the frequency, and they got 12 thousand.

I remember that moment. Melnikov says to me: “Look! Look, I’ll present another Arrow to the country now! ”And on this generator turns the knob, simply increasing the frequency.

He was a cheerful man. I remember how I played all. He showed a simple command and argued that the dispute would execute this command and there would be an ESIA. All the engineers around him gathered, he was sitting at the console, and the remote was beautiful, from oak tree ... He executes the command and really receives the AVOS. Why?And with his foot, somewhere under the remote control, he made a closure, he knew that somewhere there was something bare. These were his jokes.

I later this remote was so sorry. When they broke BESM, I Melnikova asked: “Why not to the museum, is this the whole country working?” And he says: “But they have no place!”. Then the staff of the Polytechnic Museum, in my eyes, ran, trying to at least find something. Here it is, the lack of culture.

But when I recall that time, I feel that at the IPM there was a “ring era”. Have you read Efremov? So I got into the "era of the ring." It was a good time. So many interesting projects. The most amazing thing that was done then was “Setun”, trigeminal arithmetic. Wonderful idea.

The end of the first part.