The first word in the title is Technica (as in Ars Technica), the name of the publication translates as "Tech to the Youth" ("___ to ___" is a Soviet trope, e.g. "land to the peasants").
This is a great article, and they got the name of the journal correctly in the first sentence. Someone else probably did the title, and mistyped the name.
I wondered whether it was inspired by the USSR one but it dated back to 1932. Being able to read about RSA -- and calculate it by hand is something that inspired me to be enthusiastic about computers.
I escaped Poland in '87 to Denmark -- and Donald Duck bi-monthly. No math olympiads there!
I remember another Polish journal: Horyzonty Techniki dla Dzieci (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalejdoskop_Techniki ). I was reading Russian translated version of it under the name Горизонты техники для детей. I don't know if this journal was popular in Poland, but we, kids from USSR, liked it very much!
And I still remember the chapters of В Стране Микроников, или Секреты компьютера by Мирослав Томаля. This book was published in the journal. Sorry, I found no Polish or English sources about the book and the author. The book was about the kids who by some magic got inside the computer. Basically the story is the same as in The Town in the Snuff-box by Vladimir Odoyevsky. But with a lots of details about how computer hardware works. Today I could suggest this book to kids and some curious front-end web developers! :)
Thanks. I was wondering whether Hannu Rajaniemi had read about them in such places. It was just a social concept, I guess. So maybe Hannu made the jump to virtual life.
I never heard about Hannu Rajaniemi, but I like sci-fi genre and first 2 books of his trilogy already translated to Russian, so I'll definitely read them. Thank you!
I was a bit surprised that you've connected the term sobornost with my originial message. In fact Odoevsky' tale is not only about mechanics or optics, it has philosophical meaning too and one can relate things like sobornost to it. But I think not many even Russian critics think so deep about this old tale.
Early ideas of Odoevsky and slavophiles made a base for a philosophy of Russian cosmism [1]. Just a few famous names related to this philosophy:
Nikolai Fyodorov [2], Konstantin Tsiolkovsky [3] (one of the fathers of rocketry and astronautics), Alexander Bogdanov [4] (father of systems theory), Vladimir Vernadsky [7] (noosphere).
I also suggest to read The Cybernetic Manifesto [6] by Valentin Turchin [5] (the author of programming language Refal) for more modern view on sobornost-like things.
> I was a bit surprised that you've connected the term sobornost with my originial message.
Well, you said:
> ... kids who by some magic got inside the computer ...
And that's what the Sobornost are in the Flower Prince trilogy. Uploaded followers of Fyodorov. Their enemy is the Zoku, who are descendents of uploaded MMORPG freaks. Less collectivist, and more collaborationist.
Edit: Another take on Fyodorovism is The Last Trumpet Project by Kevin MacArdry.
It's in Russian, there is no vocative case, which could probably formed such a word as молодеже. And even if there had been a vocative case it could not mean either translation you've proposed. With vocative it would have been something like "It's technology, youth".
I grew up reading this magazine, together with Yunnyi Tekhnik (Young Technologist), Nauka I Zhizn (Science and Life) and, of course, Kvant (Quantum). With all its failings USSR took science and technology very seriously and opened the funnel really wide. That is probably why USSR had nuclear weapons and space technology comparable to United States with half the population and third the money (for the pedants - I made the second ratio up, but you get the idea)
...and maybe thousands of unsung GRU agents, relentlessly stealing Western military tech. :)
The magazines were great, though. The entire generation of engineers were inspired by them. I remember getting the entire cardboard box of issues once — what a happy day!
Well, it is true. The Soviet Union leadership in the highest levels believed that reverse-engineering existing technology is better than recreating it. Obviously, the USSR wasn't going to pay licensing and patent fees to the capitalist West, right? If this is insulting, blame the Politburo and the Central Military Commission.
In fact, not reinventing the wheel allowed for the great scientific and engineering achievements that the Soviet Union did have.
Richard Rhodes is probably the definitive source for this history in The Making Of The Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun. Both excellent reads.
I don't say this to discount the abilities of the Soviet scientists working on the problem; it's an incredible achievement even with the extra "stolen" knowledge. But keep in mind that the US pursued four totally separate technologies for uranium separation and built massively expensive plants for each because they didn't know which was going to work out. The Soviets benefitted by avoiding a lot of very expensive and time-consuming dead ends.
I thought Dark Sun said that the Soviet team knew how to build a better design that a direct copy of the US implosion device but were forced to make a copy by political pressure from Beria?
I mean yes, technology was "stolen" all the time - from BOTH sides. F-117 stealth technology is based on research done in USSR. In 80ties, the US people happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there.
And yet, we don't go running around claiming that all USA flight technology achievements are based on CIA agents stealing tech and thus diminishing everything people Lockheed etc. did.
If you actually look at declassified primary sources you'll see that a huge amount of effort went into eastern designs as well and the impact of "stolen" technology is actually rather limited due to the differences in approaches of R&D teams.
Yes (which is what I said), did you also read the rest of my post.
For example for your Manhattan project thing is the classic example of how misleading such simplified outlook on the world can be. GRU stole the information about US atomic bomb, but then the info wasn't really used (because it wasn't trusted) and the USSR bombs ended up being developed independently. See this post for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_d...
This is actually a rather common occurence - even in things like USSR copying the US bomber design it showed that the technology and approaches to it were suffciently different that stolen plans weren't really that useful for plain copying. They did provide invaluable direction for R&D of course.
Let me be clear - I'm not even remotely claiming that USSR didn't attempt to copy technology or attempt to benefit it. I'm just a bit annoyed at the amount of Americans that reflexively try to erase contributions and hard work of a lot of USSR's engineers and scientists with this naive and simple dismissal. I understand that it's driven by what's effectively 50 years of propagands (from both sides!), but in 2017 we should do better. We have declassified sources now.
Yet another lame comment. GPS launched on Atlas V nowadays, which uses the insanely good LOx-rich combustion Soviet engine tech. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, American engineers believed such technology was basically impossible. It was Soviet metallurgy that made it possible.
Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate.
The idea of measuring distance by the time of signal having known speed probably predates Newton. Atomic clocks - one of the technological enablements to a satellite navigation system - were initially created with masers which Basov and Prokhorov helped to invent.
You already know about the technology to launch those precise clocks to orbit.
Sputnik was the first satellite. Everyone with a smartphone relies on satellites. GPS is a more sophisticated radio beep, but Sputnik is essentially the proof of concept of the idea.
"It was October 4th, 1957. Scientists at MIT noticed that the frequency of the radio signals transmitted by the small Russian satellite increased as it approached and decreased as it moved away. This was caused by the Doppler Effect, the same thing that makes the timbre of a car horn change as the car rushes by.
This gave the scientists a grand idea. Satellites could be tracked from the ground by measuring the frequency of the radio signals they emitted, and conversely, the locations of receivers on the ground could be tracked by their distance from the satellites. That, in a nutshell, is the conceptual foundation of modern GPS."
Sir, you don't have mind discipline. You started off from the subject "scientific achievements" and ended up with "commercial achievements", so the discussion with you will be boring.
And you are totally ignoring all other points of the response. I'd be interested on a source for the Lasers, early TV work predates the soviet union, later work doesn't seem to have happened there.
There were no questions, except agressive "Really?", so I decided to skip the points. The thing is that the original author tries to put a nationalistic mask on science, i.e. "the X was invented by country Y", which is a fallacy suitable for populist debates. Science doesn't happen in vacuum, and scientific "achievements" are usually called "contributions".
Regarding your questions. 1) Three scientists received a Nobel prize for their work on lasers, you can check the wiki for names. 2) About the TV: my bad, A. Zworykin has been working in the US on the TV problem --- it's hard to trace everyone who emigrated due to the Soviet massacre. Anyway, you can find experiments, etc. for example, by Leo Theremin.
It appears that you simply don't understand the definition of the word "science", nor the meaning of "scientific". Thus your posts mix up "science", "innovation" and "commerce". You can't measure USSR in terms of "commercial success", as there were no commerce.
Microwave: you can look for the excerpts from the magazine "Trud" from 13 June 1941 (in Russian). Scientists explained their experiments with using ultra-high frequency waves for heating up meat.
Lasers, TVs: check my previous answer.
If you want to know more about scientific success in USSR, please find yourself a course on history and philosophy of science / informatics. Soviet scientists did a lot contributions to the scientific community, including in such areas like chemistry, cybernetics, neurophysiology, psychology among others, just like any other big country in the world.
I was particularly interested in the history of sound synthesis in the 1930s, which I personally find fascinating (Evgeny Scholpo, Arseny Avraamov, Boris Yankovsky). They basically implemented spectral resynthesis and wavetable techniques using light and film! The sad thing is that this history has been stocking in archives until someone accidentally found them.
> excerpts from the magazine "Trud" from 13 June 1941
Those excerpts miraculously appeared only in 2013, when another wave of Russian nationalism sweeped over.
Consider me suspicious.
> Soviet scientists did a lot contributions to the scientific community, including in such areas like chemistry, cybernetics, neurophysiology, psychology among others, just like any other big country in the world.
No. Other big countries made _actual_ inventions (US, UK, France, Germany).
You've crossed way, way over the line into nationalist flamewars on HN, repeatedly. You've routinely been uncivil to other users, and your comment have been so fixated on one (already off-topic) political agenda as to make this a single-purpose account. We ban accounts that do these things, so I've banned this one.
If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and promise not to abuse the site like this in the future.
I'd better consider you a russophobic. Quite typical for eastern Europe, and ex-USSR countries.
> when another wave of Russian nationalism sweeped over
There is no Russian nationalism. You see is the distorted and fragmented reality, projected onto you from your media (I'm wandering what). The problem is that you don't really understand what are you talking about and what is the purpose of your discussion. Your messages are not connected with a single subject, you use slongans, populisms, trumpisms, but no substance. I've seen this in 2014–2015 when the Russian media were brainwashing people at insane rates.
It sounds like you know a lot about things many of us know little about, which is great, but on HN it's necessary to express those things civilly and not to respond to provocation by flaming people. If you can't do that, please don't post here until you can. This site values civility and substantiveness in discussion and is trying (not always successfully) for a higher-than-internet-median quality level.
That's commercial achievement, not scientific. The Obninsk power plant has been connected to a grid in 1954. It is useless to assess commercial achievements of the country which didn't have commerce at all. And in general, the question "who was the first" is unproductive, as science doesn't have nationality.
Well, I'm from the UK and I've heard it repeated often enough that Calder Hall was the first nuclear plant to generate power - so I did a search to confirm it and found that wiki page.
It's actually quite interesting that the Soviets had an earlier one - I guess the page should be updated?
No, that's not true - and it's sad to read on HN. I'm pretty sure Elon Musk would press ahead disregarding Russian involvement, given the available information.
LASIK derived from RK - the Soviets were trying to save on having to grind prescription glasses for people - the cornea would be removed, frozen in nitrogen to be stiffer, then placed on a machine that had 1-micron accuracy which then modified the cornea by essentially machining it; then the cornea would be re-attached.
RK was/is very much a Soviet invention, but it's not the same as external corneal reshaping (I can't remember the real term). RK uses corneal incisions to flatten the curvature without removal.
>'Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Russian scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. [..] However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world.[16][17] A summary of these publications was published in English in 2009 in "A Literature Review of the Practical Application of Bacteriophage Research"'
2. Electronics: Léon Theremin work in the Soviet Union which is the basis of RFID technologies [1] [2].
3. History: Knorozov work deciphering the Mayan glyphs. He work put modern Mayan studies on a firm foundation. [3]
4. Physics: Much of the developments in dynamical systems came from "the Moscow School":
>"A more abstract approach, developed in Moscow, gained attention outside the U.S.S.R. via the translation of (Nemytskii and Stepanov, 1960), introduced by S. Lefschetz, who had himself published a text on qualitative theory a few years earlier (Lefschetz 1957). Here the first clearly-defined strange attractor – the solenoid – was described. The works of Kolmogorov, Anosov, Arnold and Sinai grew out of this "Moscow school" in the 1950-60's, with important work on ergodic theory (Sinai, 1966), geodesic flows (Anosov, 1967) and billiards (Sinai, 1970), using Kolmogorov's idea of K-systems. Some of this was motivated by S. Smale's visit to Moscow in 1961, during which he met Anosov, Arnold and Sinai and told them of the conjecture that structurally stable systems with infinitely many periodic orbits could exist (see Smale's Horseshoe, below)." [4]
5. Computer Science/Complexity Theory: "The concept of NP-completeness was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in parallel by researchers in the US and the USSR."
The list is very long and I don't have all day so I'm stopping here but people living in the Soviet Union made many important scientific achievements. This is not an endorsement of the Soviet Union (see Theremin's poor treatment).
>Not sure that many people are using deciphered Mayan glyphs in their daily routines.
This gets to a question about the value of history. I find history exceptionally valuable to society, but you may disagree.
>This is good, but I've asked about achievements "made in USSR" which ordinary people still use in their daily lives.
Lets ignore Bacteriophages while we are at it. Yes, they improved countless peoples health and yes this research is used in biology, but US biotechs have met difficulty commercializing this treatment in the US because while it saves lives it is hard to monetize (IP issues). But hey, if you get a MR bacterial infection you might be happy that other options exist. [0]
That leaves three things people continue to use in their daily lives:
1. RFIDs,
2. Complexity Theory (you are using it right now),
3. and Dynamical Systems advances (as seen in aircraft, boats, cars, medical devices, electronics, etc...).
And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon.
What are you trying to prove? That inventions aren't done in vacuum and everybody stands on the shoulders of giants coming before him? Or you literally believe that USA had a half century Cold War with opponent who can't invent a thing?
Interestingly, in the book I'm currently reading (written by a former GRU officer) it is mentioned that for the GRU interest in science fiction was a definite plus when selecting the most promising young cadres. They believed that this interest showed intelligence and promise. They also appreciated young people good with modeling clay - it showed 'good spacial thinking'.
That really downplays all the work both USA and USSR did to scale the V2 designs into something that can get payloads into orbit (and the opposing lands).
There are a few good books on what Korolevs teams did which are pretty fascinating in hindsight, especially due to limited access to computers in USSR. (Obviously sources about the US space programs are about 100x more numerous in the western world :) )
Semyorka (the first rocket that delivered a payload to orbit) has very little in common with V2. Fuel, staging, control, launch facilities - pretty much everything is different.
The soviets did start by copying the V2, but immediately after that switched to original designs.
Are you sure that the Soviet budget for these activities was really lower than the US one? The US budget (and GDP) were higher, but I'd imagine the vast majority was spent on civilian activities.
On the other hand Soviet military expenses - and I think space tech actually fell into this domain - were a huge percentage of their budget, much higher than the US percentage.
So I don't think the Soviets actually spent much less than the US on this.
Another poster debunked the population numbers before me ;)
I grew up reading these as well and the striking thing to me seems the reverse: how on earth did the Soviet Union, with all the resources, totalitarian control, armies of highly educated scientists and engineers and callous disregard for human life manage to be so profoundly uncompetitive even in key prestige and power fields like space and weapons technology.
The USSR's nuclear espionage helped their bomb project, but it was not essential. They more used it to check their own work, and likely stopped some detours on the road. And if their space technology was "borrowed" from the Germans, so was the US's.
Tu-144 flew before Concord. Try to explain to some people that it's hard to get a pure copy running before the original :) - I'm not surprised anymore, they'd still insist Tu-144 is merely a copy.
When Project Apollo uses Yu. Kondratyuk's (A. Shargey) staging calculations of course that's not a copying of a critical part.
"The aircraft was introduced into passenger service on 1 November 1977, almost two years after Concorde, because of budget restrictions."
Yes, they've managed to "overcame bourgeous West" with Tu-144, but because design and production was rushed - they got Paris air show crash, postponed operational services and generally bad design, forcing earlier retirement for Tu-144.
That isn't what I said. The steps necessary for making a bomb were known to Soviet scientists, the information stolen saved them some trouble of discovering which methods worked best. Valuable, but not essential.
No however it is well known that the US and Russian missile projects benefited hugely from the knowledge and expertise of WW2 German rocket scientists.
That's almost like saying Newton _borrowed_ his works from unnamed linguists of the past who invented alphabet and writing.
Russians did get a huge boost in rocket tech from von Braun's works. However it was a long way to orbital carriers. After R-1 - a copy of V-2 - USSR made R-2 with better engines (more concentrated ethanol), separatable warhead and load-bearing tanks, then R-5 with even better engines and range, then switched to kerosene engines, practically building technology from scratch (engines, for example, used structure brazen to copper-based heat wall with milled cooling channels), multiple stages (did you see how R-7 does staging? It's a ballet in air), "tulpan" launch system, producing base for still flying Semyorka.
George Sutton, author of "History of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines" mentiones that USSR spend quite a bit more perfecting engine technology than other countries. That's part of the reason why 26 years after dissolution of USSR the technology created there is practically used with modifications on modern successful launchers (including in USA).
In general, if you have a country with big population, economic and schools producing some Nobel prize-level scientists it's hard to defend the idea that nothing of value can be made there. That doesn't diminish USSR big shortcomings but the credit is certainly due where it is.
Regarding Operation Paperclip - did you read Chertok's memoirs, where he describes his part of the story (he participated in the hunting for specialists in Germany during 1945)?
I have a friend who's into alternative history and conspiracy theories. Our discussions so far come to the point of how hard it is to have an objective criteria for correctness. Right now many people can choose beliefs and afford to stick to them even if they aren't supported by reality - because that doesn't affect them much.
In a way, my answer to your question is "it depends". For somebody with "good enough" criteria of correctness I can provide examples.
Are there any? Making iPhone copies will probably be prohibitively expensive, otherwise China will already make those in numbers. Yes they did some really lame knockoffs but I doubt you can replicate "the iPhone".
Transliteration rules are silly anyways. Pick your own scheme, as long as it's not something like Mb| BECE/\O |7E4ATAEM y>|<ACb|, Bom maka9| epyHga, u m.n. (Xom9| Bpoge 6b| u noH9|mHo, /\|-0gu >|<a/\y|-0mc9|)
It's transliterated correctly in the article body (written by
someone from a former USSR state), but it looks like the headline may have been mangled a bit by an editor
There are many ways to transliterate. While "kh" is probably the most common, I think the proliferation of systems suggests there's no one "correct" transliteration.
The options are "texnika" (eg GOST 7.79 System B), "technika" (eg ISO/R 9:1968 variant 1), "tekhnika" (many different systems, as you mention), and "tehnika" (eg ISO/R 9:1968 main variant, but perhaps the most straightforward in any case).
The Apollo lunar landing project gets a mention, on page 37, and shares the page with some tips on how to avoid being hit by lightning when out camping.
Tekhnika - molodezhi
The first word in the title is Technica (as in Ars Technica), the name of the publication translates as "Tech to the Youth" ("___ to ___" is a Soviet trope, e.g. "land to the peasants").
This is a great article, and they got the name of the journal correctly in the first sentence. Someone else probably did the title, and mistyped the name.