Name/Title
1956- First USSR Computer, Sergei LebedevDescription
The first soviet supercomputer BESM, built in 1951 at the Research Institute of Presicion Mechanics and Computing Technologies. It is written by Sergei Lebedev, the main developer and architector of the computer. Book is signed by chief engeneer of Lebedev's laboratory. Lots of original photos and schemes of elements and peripherals of BESM(see additional images), some math theory and algorytm descriptions.-------------BESM-1, originally referred to as simply the BESM or BESM AN ("BESM Akademii Nauk", BESM of the Academy of Sciences), was completed in 1952. Only one BESM-1 machine was built. The machine used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes. At the time of completion, it was the fastest computer in Europe. The floating point numbers were represented as 39-bit words: 32 bits for the numeric part, 1 bit for sign, and 1 + 5 bits for the exponent. It was capable of representing numbers in the range 10−9 – 1010. BESM-1 had 1024 words of read/write memory using ferrite cores, and 1024 words of read-only memory based on semiconducting diodes. It also had external storage: 4 magnetic tape units of 30,000 words each, and fast magnetic drum storage with a capacity of 5120 words and an access rate of 800 words/second. The computer was capable of performing 8–10 KFlops. The energy consumption was approximately 30 kW, not accounting for the cooling systems.